^Y  OF  PRI«CO^ 


"^^OGICM  SEVA\^ 


BR    1702    .B674    1922 
Boreham,    Frank,    1871-1959. 
A  handful   of    stars 


OTHER  BOOKS  BY  MR.  BOREHAM 


A  BUNCH  OF  EVERLASTINGS 
THE  HOME  OF  THE  ECHOES 
A  REEL  OF  RAINBOW 
THE  UTTERMOST  STAR 
THE  SILVER  SHADOW 
THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE  HILL 
FACES  IN  THE  FIRE 
MUSHROOMS  ON  THE  MOOR 
THE  GOLDEN  MILESTONE 
MOUNTAINS  IN  THE  MIST 
THE  LUGGAGE  OF  LIFE,  ETC. 


A  HANDFUL  OF 
STARS 


Texts  That  Have  Moved  Great  Minds 


BY 


F.   W.    BOREHAM 


•  -■  :^<y  1D32 


.•r^ 


THE  ABINGDON  PRESS 

NEW  YORK  CINCINNATI 


Copyright,  1922,  by 
F.   W.   BOREHAM 


Printed  in  tiie  United  States  of  America 


First  Edition  Printed  March,  1922 
Reprinted  June,  1922 


CONTENTS 

I.  William  Penn's  Text 9 

II.  Robinson  Crusoe's  Text it 

III.  James  Chalmers'  Text 33 

IV.  Sydney  Carton's  Text 45 

V.  Ebenezer  Erskine's  Text 57 

VI.  Doctor  Davidson's  Text 69 

VII.  Henry  Martyn's  Text 78 

VIII.  Michael  Trevanion's  Text 90 

IX.  Hudson  Taylor's  Text 102 

X.  Rodney  Steele's  Text 113 

XI.  Thomas  Huxley's  Text 125 

XII.  Walter  Petherick's  Text 137 

XIII.  Doctor  Blund's  Text 149 

XIV.  Hedley  Vicars'  Text  160 

XV.  Silas  Wright's  Text 172 

XVI.  Michael  Faraday's  Text 182 

XVII.  Janet  Dempster's  Text 193 

XVIII .  Catherine  Booth's  Text 204 

XIX.  Uncle  Tom's  Text 216 

XX.  Andrew  Bonar's  Text 227 

XXI.  Francis  d'Assisi's  Text 237 

XXII.  Everybody's  Text 250 


BY  WAY  OF  INTRODUCTION 

It  is  not  good  that  a  book  should  be  alone:  this 
is  a  companion  volume  to  A  Bunch  of  Ever- 
lastings.    *0  God,'  cried  Caliban  from  the  abyss, 

O  God,  if  you  wish  for  our  love, 
Fling  us  a  handful  of  stars! 

The  Height  evidently  accepted  the  challenge  of  the 
Depth.  Heaven  hungered  for  the  love  of  Earth, 
and  so  the  stars  were  thrown.  I  have  gathered  up 
a  few,  and,  like  children  with  their  beads  and  ber- 
ries, have  threaded  them  upon  this  string.  It  will- 
be  seen  that  they  do  not  all  belong  to  the  same  con- 
stellation. Most  of  them  shed  their  luster  over  the 
stern  realities  of  life:  a  few  glittered  in  the  firma- 
ment of  fiction.  It  matters  little.  A  great  romance 
is  a  portrait  of  humanity,  painted  by  a  master-hand. 
When  the  novelist  employs  the  majestic  words  of 
revelation  to  transfigure  the  lives  of  his  characters, 
he  does  so  because,  in  actual  experience,  he  finds 
those  selfsame  words  indelibly  engraven  upon  the 
souls  of  men.  And,  after  all,  Sydney  Carton's  Text 
is  really  Charles  Dickens'  Text;  Robinson  Crusoe's 
Text  is  Daniel  Defoe's  Text;  the  text  that  stands 
embedded  in  the  pathos  of  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  is  the 

7 


8  By  Way  of  Introduction 

text  that  Mrs.  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe  had  enthroned 
within  her  heart.  Moreover,  to  whatever  group 
these  splendid  orbs  belong,  their  deathless  radiance 
has  been  derived,  in  every  case,  from  the  perennial 
Fountain  of  all  Beauty  and  Brightness. 

Frank  W.  BorehaMj, 
Armadale,  Melbourne,  Australia. 


WILLIAM  PENN'S  TEXT 


The  Algonquin  chiefs  are  gathered  in  solemn 
conclave.  They  make  a  wild  and  striking  and  pic- 
turesque group.  They  are  assembled  under  the 
wide-spreading  branches  of  a  giant  elm,  not  far 
from  the  banks  of  the  Delaware.  It  is  easy  to  see 
that  something  altogether  unusual  is  afoot.  Rang- 
ing themselves  in  the  form  of  a  crescent,  these  men 
of  scarred  limbs  and  fierce  visage  fasten  their  eyes 
curiously  upon  a  white  man  who,  standing  against 
the  bole  of  the  elm,  comes  to  them  as  white  man 
never  came  before.  He  is  a  young  man  of  about 
eight  and  thirty,  wearing  about  his  lithe  and  well- 
knit  figure  a  sash  of  skyblue  silk.  He  is  tall,  hand- 
some and  of  commanding  presence.  His  move- 
ments are  easy,  agile  and  athletic;  his  manner  is 
courtly,  graceful  and  pleasing;  his  voice,  whilst 
deep  and  firm,  is  soft  and  agreeable;  his  face  in- 
spires instant  confidence.  He  has  large  lustrous  eyes 
which  seem  to  corroborate  and  confirm  every  word 
that  falls  from  his  lips.  These  tattooed  warriors 
read  him  through  and  through,  as  they  have  trained 
themselves  to  do,  and  they  feel  that  they  can  trust 

9. 


lo  A  Handful  of  Stars 

him.  In  his  hand  he  holds  a  roll  of  parchment.  For 
this  young  man  in  the  sky  blue  sash  is  William  Penn. 
He  is  making  his  famous  treaty  with  the  Indians. 
It  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  instruments  ever 
completed.  'It  is  the  only  treaty,'  Voltaire  declares, 
'that  was  ever  made  without  an  oath,  and  the  only 
treaty  that  never  was  broken.'  By  means  of  this 
treaty  with  the  Indians,  William  Penn  is  beginning 
to  realize  the  greatest  aspiration  of  his  life.  For 
William  Penn  has  set  his  heart  on  being  the  Con- 
queror of  the  World! 

II 

Strangely  enough,  it  was  a  Quaker  who  fired  the 
young  man's  fancy  with  this  proud  ambition, 
Thomas  Loe  was  William  Penn's  good  angel. 
There  seemed  to  be  no  reason  why  their  paths 
should  cross,  yet  their  paths  were  always  crossing. 
A  subtle  and  inexplicable  magnetism  drew  them  to- 
gether. Penn's  father — Sir  William  Penn — was  an 
admiral,  owning  an  estate  in  Ireland.  When  Wil- 
liam was  but  a  small  boy,  Thomas  Loe  visited  Cork. 
The  coming  of  the  Quaker  caused  a  mild  sensation ; 
nobody  knew  what  to  make  of  it.  Moved  largely 
by  curiosity,  the  admiral  invited  the  quaint  preacher 
to  visit  him.  He  did  so,  and,  before  leaving,  ad- 
dressed the  assembled  household.  William  was  too 
young  to  understand,  but  he  was  startled  when,  in 
the  midst  of  the  address,  a  colored  servant  wept 
aloud.     The  boy  turned  in  his  astonishment  to  his 


William  Penn's  Text  ii 

father,  only  to  notice  that  tears  were  making  their 
way  down  the  bronzed  cheeks  of  the  admiral.  The 
incident  filled  him  with  wonder  and  perplexity.  He 
never  forgot  it.  It  left  upon  his  mind  an  indelible 
impression  of  the  intense  reality  of  all  things  spirit- 
ual. As  a  schoolboy,  he  would  wander  in  the  for- 
ests that  so  richly  surrounded  his  Essex  home,  and 
give  himself  to  rapt  and  silent  contemplation.  On 
one  occasion,  he  tells  us,  he  'was  suddenly  sur- 
prised with  an  inward  comfort.'  It  seemed  to  him 
as  if  a  heavenly  glory  irradiated  the  room  in  which 
he  was  sitting.  He  felt  that  he  could  never  after- 
wards doubt  the  existence  of  God  nor  question 
the  possibility  of  the  soul's  access  to  Him. 

It  was  at  Oxford  that  the  boy's  path  crossed  that 
of  the  Quaker  for  the  second  time.  When,  as  a  lad 
of  sixteen,  William  Penn  went  up  to  the  Univer- 
sity, he  found  to  his  surprise  that  Oxford  was  the 
home  of  Thomas  Loe.  There  the  good  man  had 
already  suffered  imprisonment  for  conscience  sake. 
The  personality  of  the  Quaker  appealed  to  the  re- 
flective temperament  of  the  young  student,  whilst 
the  good  man's  sufferings  for  his  convictions  awoke 
his  profoundest  sympathies.  To  the  horror  of  his 
father,  he  ardently  espoused  the  persecuted  cause, 
involving  himself  in  such  disfavor  with  the  au- 
thorities of  the  University  that  they  peremptorily 
ordered  his  dismissal. 

But  it  was  the  third  crossing  of  the  paths  that 
most  deeply  and  permanently  affected  the  destinies 


12 


A  Handful  of  Stars 


of  William  Penn.  Soon  after  his  expulsion  from 
Oxford,  he  was  appointed  Victualler  of  the  Squad- 
ron lying  off  Kinsale,  and  was  authorized  to  reside 
at,  and  manage,  his  father's  Irish  estate.  It  was 
whilst  he  was  thus  engaged  that  Thomas  Loe  re- 
visited Cork.  Penn,  of  course,  attended  the  meet- 
ings. 'It  was  in  this  way,'  he  tells  us,  'that  God, 
in  His  everlasting  kindness,  guided  my  feet  in  the 
flower  of  my  youth,  when  about  two  and  twenty 
years  of  age.  He  visited  me  with  a  certain  testi- 
mony of  His  eternal  Word  through  a  Quaker  named 
Thomas  Loe.'  The  text  at  that  memorable  and  his- 
toric service,  like  a  nail  in  a  sure  place,  fastened 
itself  upon  the  mind  of  the  young  officer.  Thomas 
Loe  preached  from  the  words :  'This  is  the  victory 
that  overcometh  the  world,  even  our  faith.' 
The  faith  that  overcomes! 

The  faith  by  which  a  man  may  conquer  the  world! 
The  faith  that  is  itself  a  victory! 
'This  is  the  victory  that  overcometh  the  world, 
even  our  faith!' 

Penn  was  electrified.  His  whole  being  was 
stirred  to  its  depths.  'The  undying  fires  of  en- 
thusiasm at  once  blazed  up  within  him,'  one  record 
declares.  'He  was  exceedingly  reached  and  wept 
much,'  the  Quaker  chronicle  assures  us.  He  re- 
nounced every  hope  that  he  had  ever  cherished  in 
order  that  he  might  realize  this  one.  This  was  in 
1666 — the  year  in  which  London  was  devoured  by 
the  flames. 


William  Penn's  Text  13 

'Penn's  conversion,'  says  Dr.  Stoughton,  'was 
now  completed.  That  conversion  must  not  be  re- 
garded simply  as  a  change  of  opinion.  It  pene- 
trated his  moral  nature.  It  made  him  a  new  man. 
He  rose  into  another  sphere  of  spiritual  life  and 
consciousness.' 

In  his  lecture  on  Evangelist,  Dr.  Alexander 
Whyte  says  that  the  first  minister  whose  words 
were  truly  blessed  of  God  for  our  awakening  and 
conversion  has  always  a  place  of  his  own  in  our 
hearts.  Thomas  Loe  certainly  had  a  place  pecu- 
liarly his  own  in  the  heart  of  William  Penn.  Penn 
was  with  him  at  the  last. 

'Stand  true  to  God!'  cried  the  dying  Quaker, 
as  he  clasped  the  hand  of  his  most  notable  convert. 
'Stand  faithful  for  God!  There  is  no  other  way! 
This  is  the  way  in  which  the  holy  men  of  old  all 
walked.  Walk  in  it  and  thou  shalt  prosper!  Live 
for  God  and  He  will  be  with  you !  I  can  say  no 
more.     The  love  of  God  overcomes  my  heart  1' 

The  love  that  overcomes! 

The  faith  that  overcomes! 

*This  is  the  victory  that  overcometh  the  world, 
even  our  faith!' 

Ill 

William  Penn  realized  his  dream.  He  became 
the  Conqueror  of  the  World.  Indeed,  he  conquered 
not  one  world,  but  two.  Or  perhaps,  after  all,  they 
were  merely  two  hemispheres  of  the  selfsame  world. 


14     '  A  Handful  of  Stars 

One  was  the  World  Within;  the  other  was  the 
World  Without;  and,  of  the  two,  the  first  is  always 
the  harder  to  conquer. 

The  victory  that  overcometh  the  world!  What 
is  the  world  f  The  Puritans  talked  much  about  the 
world;  and  Penn  was  the  contemporary  of  the 
Puritans.  Cromwell  died  just  as  the  admiral  was  pre- 
paring to  send  his  son  to  Oxford.  Whilst  at  Cork, 
Penn  sat  listening  to  Thomas  Loe's  sermon  on  the 
faith  that  overcometh  the  world,  John  Milton  was 
putting  the  finishing  touches  to  Paradise  Lost,  and 
John  Bunyan  was  languishing  in  Bedford  Gaol. 
Each  of  the  three  had  something  to  say  about  the 
world.  To  Cromwell  it  was,  as  he  told  his  daugh- 
ter, 'whatever  cooleth  thine  affection  after  Christ.' 
Bunyan  gave  his  definition  of  the  world  in  his  pic- 
ture of  Vanity  Fair.  Milton  likened  the  world  to 
an  obscuring  mist — a  fog  that  renders  dim  and  in- 
distinct the  great  realities  and  vitalities  of  life.  It 
is  an  atmosphere  that  chills  the  finest  delicacies  and 
sensibilities  of  the  soul.  It  is  too  subtle  and  too 
elusive  to  be  judged  by  external  appearances.  In 
his  fine  treatment  of  the  world,  Bishop  Alexander 
cites,  by  way  of  illustration,  still  another  of  the 
contemporaries  of  William  Penn.  He  paints  a  pair 
of  companion  pictures.  He  depicts  a  gay  scene  at 
the  frivolous  and  dissolute  Court  of  Charles  the 
Second;  and,  beside  it,  he  describes  a  religious  as- 
sembly of  the  same  period.  The  first  gathering  ap- 
pears  to   be   altogether   worldly:    the   second   has 


William  Perm's  Text  15 

nothing  of  the  world  about  it.  Yet,  he  says,  Mary 
Godolphin  lived  her  life  at  Court  without  being 
tainted  by  any  shadow  of  worldliness,  whilst  many 
a  man  went  up  to  those  solemn  assemblies  with  the 
world  raging  furiously  within  his  soul ! 

William  Penn  saw  the  world  in  his  heart  that 
day  as  he  listened  to  Thomas  Loe;  and,  in  order 
that  he  might  overcome  it,  he  embraced  the  faith 
that  the  Quaker  proclaimed.  'This  is  the  victory 
that  overcometh  the  ivorld,  even  our  faith,'  And 
by  that  faith  he  overcame  tlie  zvorld.  Many  years 
afterwards  he  himself  told  the  story. 

'The  Lord  first  appeared  to  me,'  he  says,  in  his 
Journal,  *in  the  twelfth  year  of  my  age,  and  He 
visited  me  at  intervals  afterwards  and  gave  me  di- 
vine impressions  of  Himself.  He  sustained  me 
through  the  darkness  and  debauchery  of  Oxford, 
through  all  my  experiences  in  France,  through  the 
trials  that  arose  from  my  father's  harshness,  and 
through  the  terrors  of  the  Great  Plague.  He  gave 
me  a  deep  sense  of  the  vanity  of  the  world  and  of 
the  irreligiousness  of  the  religions  of  it.  The  glory 
of  the  world  often  overtook  me,  and  I  was  ever 
ready  to  give  myself  up  to  it.'  But,  invariably,  the 
faith  that  overcometh  the  world  proved  victorious. 
In  his  monumental  History  of  the  United  States, 
Bancroit  says  that,  splendid  as  were  the  triumphs 
of  Penn,  his  greatest  conquest  was  the  conquest  of 
his  own  soul.  Extraordinary  as  was  the  greatness 
of  his  mind;  remarkable,  both  for  universality  and 


i6  A  Handful  of  Stars 

precision,  as  were  the  vast  conceptions  of  his  genius ; 
profound  as  was  his  scholarship,  and  astute  as  was 
his  diplomacy;  the  historian  is  convinced  that,  in 
the  last  resort,  his  greatest  contribution  to  history- 
is  the  development  and  influence  of  his  impressive 
and  robust  character.  'He  was  prepared  for  his 
work,'  Bancroft  says,  'by  the  severe  discipline  of 
life;  and  love  without  dissimulation  formed  the 
basis  of  his  being.  The  sentiment  of  cheerful  hu- 
manity was  irrepressibly  strong  in  his  bosom; 
benevolence  gushed  prodigally  from  his  ever  over- 
flowing heart ;  and  when,  in  his  late  old  age,  his  in- 
tellect was  impaired  and  his  reason  prostrated,  his 
sweetness  of  disposition  rose  serenely  over  the 
clouds  of  disease.'  The  winsomeness  of  his  ways 
and  the  courtliness  of  his  bearing  survived  for  many 
months  the  collapse  of  his  memory  and  the  loss  of 
his  powers  of  speech. 

Such  was  his  faith's  first  victory.  It  was  the 
conquest  of  the  world  within. 

IV 

*This  is  the  victory  that  overcometh  the  world, 
even  our  faith/  It  was  by  his  faith  that  he  ob- 
tained his  second  great  triumph — his  conquest  of 
the  world  without.  He  disarmed  nations  by  con- 
fiding in  them.  He  bound  men  to  himself  by  trust- 
ing them.  He  vanquished  men  by  believing  in 
them.    It  was  always  by  his  faith  that  he  overcame. 


William  Penn's  Tezt  17 

When  the  admiral  died,  the  nation  was  in  his 
debt  to  the  extent  of  sixteen  thousand  pounds.  This 
amount — on  its  recovery — Sir  William  bequeathed 
to  his  son.  In  due  time  the  matter  was  compounded, 
William  Perm  agreeing  to  accept  an  immense  belt  o£ 
virgin  forest  in  North  America  in  full  settlement  of 
his  claim.  He  resolved  to  establish  a  new  colony 
across  the  seas  under  happier  conditions  than  any 
State  had  ever  known.  It  should  be  called  Pennsyl- 
vania; it  should  be  the  land  of  freedom;  its  capital 
should  be  named  Philadelphia — the  City  of  Broth- 
erly Love.  He  was  reminded  that  his  first  task 
would  be  to  subdue  the  Indians.  The  savages^ 
everybody  said,  must  be  conquered;  and  William 
Penn  made  up  his  mind  to  conquer  them;  but  he 
determined  to  conquer  them  in  his  own  way.  'This 
is  the  victory  that  overcometh  the  world,  even  our 
faith.'  The  Indians  were  accustomed  to  slaughter. 
They  understood  no  language  but  the  language  of 
the  tomahawk  and  the  scalping-knife.  Ever  since 
the  w'hite  man  had  landed  on  American  shores,  the 
forests  had  resounded  with  the  war-whoops  of  the 
tribesmen.  One  night  a  colonial  settlement  had  been 
raided  by  the  red  men :  the  next  an  Indian  village 
had  been  burned,  and  its  inhabitants  massacred  by 
the  outraged  whites.  The  Indians  looked  with 
hatred  upon  the  smoke  of  the  English  settlements; 
the  settlers  dreaded  the  forests  which  protected  the 
ambush,  and  secured  the  retreat  of  their  murderous 
foes.     William  Penn  conquered  the  Indians,   and 


1 8  A  Handful  of  Staxs 

conquered  them — according  to  his  text — hy  his 
faith.  'He  will  always  be  mentioned  with  honor,' 
Macaulay  says,  'as  a  founder  of  a  colony  who  did 
not,  in  his  dealings  with  a  savage  people,  abuse  the 
strength  derived  from  civilization,  and  as  a  lawgiver 
who,  in  an  age  of  persecution,  made  religious  liberty 
the  cornerstone  of  his  policy.' 

Immediately  upon  his  arrival  he  called  the  In- 
dians to  meet  him.  They  gathered  under  the  great 
elm  at  Shakamaxon — ^a  spot  that  is  now  marked 
by  a  monument.  He  approached  the  chiefs  un- 
armed; and  they,  in  return,  threw  away  their  bows 
and  arrows.  Presents  were  exchanged  and  speeches 
made.  Penn  told  the  natives  that  he  desired  nothing 
but  their  friendship.  He  undertook  that  neither  he 
nor  any  of  his  friends  should  ever  do  the  slightest 
injury  to  the  person  or  the  property  of  an  Indian; 
and  they,  in  reply,  bound  themselves  'to  live  in  love 
with  Onas' — as  they  called  him — 'and  with  the  chil- 
dren of  Onas,  as  long  as  the  sun  and  the  moon  shall 
endure.'  'This  treaty  of  peace  and  friendship  was 
made,'  as  Bancroft  says,  'under  the  open  sky,  by  the 
side  of  the  Delaware,  with  the  sun  and  the  river  and 
the  forest  for  witnesses.  It  was  not  confirmed  by 
an  oath ;  it  was  not  ratified  by  signatures  and  seals ; 
no  written  record  of  the  conference  can  be  found; 
and  its  terms  and  conditions  had  no  abiding  monu- 
ment, but  on  the  heart.  There  they  were  written 
like  the  law  of  God  and  were  never  forgotten.  The 
simple  sons  of  the  wilderness,  returning  to  their 


William  Penn's  Text  19 

wigwams,  kept  the  history  of  the  covenant  by  strings 
of  wampum,  and,  long  afterwards,  in  their  cabins, 
they  would  count  over  the  shells  on  a  clean  piece  of 
bark  and  recall  to  their  own  memory,  and  repeat  to 
their  children  or  to  the  stranger,  the  words  of  Wil- 
liam Penn.'  The  world  laug'hed  at  the  fantastic 
agreement ;  but  the  world  noticed,  at  the  same  time, 
that,  whilst  the  neighboring  colonies  were  being 
drenched  in  blood  and  decimated  by  the  barbarity 
of  the  Mohicans  and  the  Delawares,  the  hearths  of 
Pennsylvania  enjoyed  an  undisturbed  repose.  No 
drop  of  Quaker  blood  was  ever  shed  by  an  Indian. 
So  complete  was  the  victory  of  the  faith  of  William 
Penn! 

Nor  was  the  conquest  merely  negative.  When, 
after  a  few  years,  the  Quakers  began  to  swarm 
across  the  Atlantic  to  people  the  new  settlement, 
they  were  confronted  by  experiences  such  as  await 
all  pioneers  in  young  colonies.  There  were  times 
of  stress  and  privation  and  hardship.  The  stern 
voice  of  necessity  commanded  even  delicate  women 
to  undertake  tasks  for  which  their  frames  were  far 
too  frail.  In  that  emergency  the  Indians  came  to 
the  rescue.  The  red  men  worked  for  them,  trapped 
for  them,  hunted  for  them,  and  served  them  in  a 
thousand  ways.  'You  are  all  the  children  of  Onas!' 
they  said.  Nothing  delighted  the  Indians  more 
than  to  receive  the  great  Onas  as  their  guest.  A 
feast  was  arranged  in  the  depths  of  the  forest,  bucks 
were  killed,  cakes  were  cooked,  and  the  whole  tribe 


20  A  Handful  of  Stars 

abandoned  itself  to  festivity  and  rejoicing.  And 
when,  years  afterwards,  they  heard  that  Onas  was 
dead,  they  sent  his  widow  a  characteristic  message 
of  sympathy,  accompanied  by  a  present  of  beautiful 
furs.  'These  skins,'  they  said,  'are  to  protect  you 
whilst  passing  through  the  thorny  wilderness  with- 
out your  guide.'  The  story  of  the  founding  of 
Pennsylvania  is,  as  a  classical  writer  finely  says, 
'one  of  the  most  beautiful  incidents  in  the  history 
of  the  age.'  It  was  the  victary  of  faith — the  faith 
that  overcometh  the  world! 


V 

'This  is  the  Victory!' 

'The  Victory  that  overcometh  the  World!' 

The  World  Within!    The  World  Without! 

'His  character  always  triumphed,'  says  Bancroft. 
''His  name  was  fondly  cherished  as  a  house'hold 
word  in  the  cottages  of  the  old  world;  and  not  a 
tenant  of  a  wigwam  from  the  Susquehannah  to  the 
sea  doubted  his  integrity.  His  fame  is  as  wide  as 
the  world:  he  is  one  of  the  few  who  have  gained 
abiding  glory.' 

The  Conquest  of  the  world! 

'Nobody  doubted  his  integrity!' 

'He  gained  abiding  glory!' 

'This  is  the  Victory  that  overcometh  the  World, 
even  our  Faith!' 


II 

ROBINSON  CRUSOE'S  TEXT 


During  the  years  that  Robinson  Crusoe  spent 
upon  the  island,  his  most  distinguished  visitor  was 
a  text.  Three  times  it  came  knocking  at  the  door 
of  his  hut,  and  at  the  door  of  his  heart.  It  came 
to  him  as  his  doctor  in  the  day  of  sore  sickness;  it 
came  as  his  minister  when  his  soul  was  in  darkness 
and  distress;  and  it  came  as  his  deliverer  in  the  hour 
of  his  most  extreme  peril. 

Nine  months  after  the  shipwreck  Crusoe  was 
overtaken  by  a  violent  fever.  His  situation  filled 
him  with  alarm,  for  he  had  no  one  to  advise  him, 
no  one  to  help  him,  no  one  to  care  whether  he  lived 
or  died.  The  prospect  of  death  filled  him  with  un- 
governable terror. 

'Suddenly,'  he  says,  'it  occurred  to  my  thought 
that  the  Brazilians  take  no  physic  but  tobacco  for 
all  their  distempers,  and  I  remembered  that  I  had  a 
roll  of  tobacco  in  one  of  the  chests  that  I  had  saved 
from  the  wreck.  I  went,  directed  by  heaven  no 
doubt;  for  in  this  chest  I  found  a  cure  both  for  soul 
and  body.  I  opened  the  chest  and  found  the  tobacco 
that  I  was  looking  for;  and  I  also  found  a  Bible 

21 


22  A  Handful  of  Stars 

which,  up  to  this  time,  I  had  found  neither  leisure 
nor  indination  to  look  into.  I  took  up  the  Bible 
and  began  to  read.  Having  opened  the  book  casu- 
ally, the  first  words  that  occurred  to  me  were  these : 
*^Call  upon  Me  in  the  day  of  trouble,  and  I  will  de- 
liver thee,  and  thou  shall  glorify  Me."  The  words 
were  very  apt  to  my  case.  They  made  a  great  im- 
pression upon  me  and  I  mused  upon  them  very 
often.  I  left  my  lamp  burning  in  the  cave  lest  I 
should  vv^ant  anything  in  the  night,  and  went  to  bed. 
But  before  I  lay  down  I  did  what  I  never  had  done 
in  all  my  life — I  kneeled  down  and  prayed.  I  asked 
God  to  fulfil  the  promise  to  me  that  if  I  called  upon 
Him  in  the  day  of  trouble  He  would  deliver  me.' 

Those  who  have  been  similarly  situated  know 
what  such  prayers  are  worth.  'When  the  devil  was 
sick  the  devil  a  saint  would  be.'  Crusoe's  prayer 
was  the  child  of  his  terror.  He  was  prepared  to 
snatch  at  anything  Which  might  stand  between  him 
and  a  lonely  death.  When  he  called  for  deliverance, 
he  meant  deliverance  from  sickness  and  solitude; 
but  it  was  not  of  that  deliverance  that  the  text  had 
come  to  speak.  When,  therefore,  the  crisis  had 
passed,  the  text  repeated  its  visit.  It  came  to  him 
in  time  of  health. 

'Now,'  says  Crusoe,  'I  began  to  construe  the 
words  that  I  had  read — "Call  upon  Me  in  the  day 
of  trouble,  and  I  will  deliver  thee,  and  thou  shall 
glorify  Me" — ^^in  a  different  sense  from  what  I  had 
done  before.    For  then  I  had  no  notion  of  any  de- 


Robinson  Crusoe's  Text  23 

liverance  but  my  deliverance  from  the  captivity 
I  was  in.  But  now  I  learned  to  take  it  in  another 
sense.  Now  I  looked  back  upon  my  past  life  with 
such  horror,  and  my  sins  appeared  so  dreadful, 
that  my  soul  sought  nothing  of  God  but  deliverance 
from  the  load  of  guilt  that  bore  down  all  my  com- 
fort. As  for  my  lonely  life,  it  was  nothing.  I  did 
not  so  much  as  pray  for  deliverance  from  my  soli- 
tude ;  it  was  of  no  consideration  in  comparison  with 
deliverance  from  my  sin.' 

This  second  visit  of  the  text  brought  him,  Crusoe 
tells  us,  a  great  deal  of  comfort.  So  did  the  third. 
That  third  memorable  visit  was  paid  eleven  years 
later.  Everybody  remembers  the  stirring  story.  'It 
happened  one  day,  about  noon,'  Crusoe  says.  *I 
was  exceedingly  surprised,  on  going  towards  my 
boat,  to  see  the  print  of  a  man's  naked  foot  on  the 
shore.  I  stood  like  one  thunderstruck,  or  as  if  I 
liad  seen  a  ghost.  I  examined  it  again  and  again  to 
make  sure  that  it  was  not  my  fancy ;  and  then,  con- 
fused with  terror,  I  fled,  like  one  pursued,  to  my 
fortification,  scarcely  feeling  the  ground  I  trod  on, 
looking  behind  me  at  every  two  or  three  steps,  and 
fancying  every  stump  to  be  a  man.'  It  was  on  his 
arrival  at  his  fortification  that  the  text  came  to  him 
the  third  time. 

'Lying  in  my  bed,'  he  says,  'filled  with  thoughts 
of  my  danger  from  the  appearance  of  savages,  my 
mind  was  greatly  discomposed.  Then,  suddenly, 
these  words  of  Scripture  came  into  my  thoughts: 


24  A  Handful  of  Stars 

**Call  upon  Me  in  the  day  of  trouble,  and  I  will  de- 
liver thee,  and  thou  shalt  glorify  Me."  Upon  this, 
rising  cheerfully  out  of  my  bed,  I  was  guided  and 
encouraged  to  pray  earnestly  to  God  for  deliverance. 
It  is  impossible  to  express  the  comfort  this  gave  me. 
In  answer,  I  thankfully  laid  down  the  Book  and  was 
no  more  sad.' 

These,  then,  were  the  three  visits  that  the  text 
paid  to  Crusoe  on  his  desolate  island.  'Call  upon 
Me  in  the  day  of  trouble,  and  I  will  deliver  thee, 
and  thou  shalt  glorify  Me.' 

When  the  text  came  to  him  the  first  time,  he 
called  for  deliverance  from  sickness;  and  was  in  a 
few  days  well. 

When  the  text  came  to  him  the  second  time,  he 
called  for  deliverance  from  sin;  and  was  led  to  a 
crucified  and  exalted  Saviour. 

When  the  text  came  to  him  the  third  time,  he 
called  for  deliverance  from  savages;  and  the  sav- 
ages, so  far  from  hurting  a  hair  of  his  head,  fur- 
nished him  with  his  man  Friday,  the  staunchest, 
truest  friend  he  ever  had. 

'Call  upon  Me'  said  the  text,  not  once,  nor  twice, 
but  thrice.  And,  three  times  over,  Crusoe  called, 
and  each  time  was  greatly  and  wonderfully  deliv- 
ered. 

II 

Robinson  Crusoe  was  written  in  1719;  exactly  a 
century  later  The  Monastery  was  published.    And, 


Robinson  Crusoe's  Test  25 

significantly  enoug'h,  the  text  which  shines  with  such 
luster  in  Daniel  Defoe's  masterpiece  forms  also  the 
pivot  of  Sir  Walter  Scott's  weird  story.  Mary 
Avenel  comes  to  the  climax  of  her  sorrows.  She 
seems  to  have  lost  everything  and  everybody.  Her 
hfe  is  desolate;  her  grief  is  inconsolable.  Her 
faithful  attendant,  Tibbie,  exhausts  herself  in  futile 
attempts  to  compose  and  comfort  the  mind  of  her 
young  mistress.  Father  Eustace  does  his  best  to 
console  her ;  but  she  feels  that  it  is  all  words,  words, 
words.  All  at  once,  however,  she  comes  upon  her 
mother's  Bible — the  Bible  that  had  passed  through 
so  many  strange  experiences  and  had  been  so  won- 
derfully preserved.  Remembering  that  this  little 
Book  was  her  mother's  constant  stay  and  solace — 
her  counselor  in  time  of  perplexity  and  her  comfort 
in  the  hour  of  grief — Mary  seized  it,  Sir  Walter 
says,  with  as  much  joy  as  her  melancholy  situation 
permitted  her  to  feel.  Ignorant  as  she  was  of  its 
contents,  she  had  nevertheless  learned  from  infancy 
to  hold  the  Volume  in  sacred  veneration.  On  open- 
ing it,  she  found  that,  among  the  leaves,  there  were 
texts  neatly  inscribed  in  her  mother's  handv/riting. 
In  Mary's  present  state  of  mind,  tliese  passages, 
reaching  her  at  a  time  so  critical  and  in  a  manner 
so  touching,  strangely  affected  her.  She  read  on 
one  of  these  slips  the  consoling  exhortation:  'Call 
upon  Me  in  the  day  of  trouble,  and  I  will  deliver 
thee,  and  thou  shalt  glorify  Me.'  'There  are  those,* 
Sir  Walter  says,  'to  whom  a  sense  of  religion  has 


26  A  Handful  of  Stars 

come  in  storm  and  tempest;  there  are  those  whom 
it  has  summoned  amid  scenes  of  revelry  and  idle 
vanity;  there  are  those,  too,  who  have  heard  its 
still  small  voice  amid  rural  leisure  and  placid  con- 
tentment. But  perhaps  the  knowledge  which  caus- 
eth  not  to  err  is  most  frequently  impressed  upon 
tl^e  mind  during  seasons  of  affliction;  and  tears  are 
the  softened  showers  which  cause  the  seed  of 
heaven  to  spring  and  take  root  in  the  human  breast. 
At  least,  it  was  thus  with  Mary  Avenel.  She  read 
the  words — "Call  upon  Me  in  the  day  of  trouble, 
and  I  will  deliver  thee,  and  thou  shall  glorify  Me" — 
and  her  heart  acquiesced  in  the  conclusion :  Surely 
this  is  the  Word  of  God!' 

In  the  case  of  Mary  Avenel,  the  resultant  deliv- 
erance was  as  dramatic  as  in  the  case  of  Robinson 
Crusoe.  I  turn  a  few  pages  of  The  Monastery,  and 
I  come  upon  this : 

'The  joyful  news  that  Halbert  Glendinning — 
Mary's  lover — still  lived  was  quickly  communicated 
through  the  sorrowing  family.  His  mother  wept 
and  thanked  heaven  alternately.  On  Mary  Avenel 
the  impression  was  inconceivably  deeper.  She  had 
newly  learned  to  pray,  and  it  seemed  to  her  that  her 
prayers  had  been  instantly  answered.  She  felt  that 
the  compassion  of  heaven,  which  she  had  learned  to 
implore  in  the  very  words  of  Scripture — "Call  upon 
Me  in  the  day  of  trouble,  and  I  will  deliver  thee, 
and  thou  shall  glorify  Me" — had  descended  upon 
her  after  a  manner  almost  miraculous,  and  recalled 


Robinson  Crusoe's  Text  27 

the  dead  from  the  grave  at  the  sound  of  her  lamen- 
tations.' 

I  lay  this,  written  by  Sir  Walter  Scott,  in  1819, 
beside  that,  written  by  Daniel  Defoe  in  17 19,  In 
the  mouths  of  two  such  witnesses  shall  every  word 
be  established^ 

III 

What  was  it  that  led  both  Daniel  Defoe  and  Sir 
Walter  Scott  to  give  the  text  such  prominence? 
What  was  it  in  the  text  that  appealed  so  irresistibly 
to  Robinson  Crusoe  and  to  Mary  Avenel?  The 
answer  is  fourfold. 

I.  It  wa.s  the  Charm  of  Companionship.  Robin- 
son Crusoe  fancied  that  he  was  alone  upon  his 
island.  Mary  Avenel  fancied  that  she  was  left 
friendless  and  forsaken.  They  were  both  mistaken; 
and  it  was  the  text  that  showed  them  their  mistake. 
'Call  upon  Me  in  the  day  of  trouble,  and  I  will  de- 
liver thee.'  If  such  a  Deliverer  is  at  hand — so  near 
as  to  be  within  sound  of  their  voices — how  can  Rob- 
inson Crusoe  be  solitary  or  Mary  Avenel  forsaken? 

Speak  to  Him,  thou,  for  He  hears;  spirit  with  spirit  can. 

meet — 
Closer  is  He  than  breathing,  and  nearer  than  hands  and 

feet! 

If  there  be  a  shadow  of  truth  in  Robinson  Cru- 
soe's text,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  lonehness  for 
any  of  us! 


28  A  Handful  of  Stars 

2.  It  was  the  Ring  of  Certainty.  There  is  a 
strange  and  holy  dogmatism  about  the  great  evan- 
geHcal  promises.  'Call  and  I  will  deliver.'  Other 
physicians  say:  'I  will  come  and  do  my  best.'  The 
Great  Physician  says:  T  will  come  and  heal  him.' 
The  Son  of  Man  is  come  to  seek  and  to  save  that 
which  is  lost.  He  did  not  embark  upon  a  magnifi- 
cent effort;  He  came  to  do  it. 

3.  It  was  the  Claim  of  Monopoly.  'Call  upon 
Me  in  the  day  of  trouble,  and  /  will  deliver  thee.' 
It  suggests  the  utter  absence  of  alternatives,  of  se- 
lection, of  picking  and  choosing.  In  the  straits  of 
the  soul,  the  issues  are  wonderfully  simple.  There 
is  none  other  Name  given  under  heaven  among  men 
whereby  we  must  be  saved.  It  is  this  Companion 
— or  solitude;  this  Deliverer — or  captivity;  this 
Saviour — or  none. 

4.  It  was  the  Absence  of  Technicality.  'Call!' 
— that  is  all.  'Call  upon  Me  in  the  day  of  trouble, 
and  I  will  deliver  thee,  and  thou  shalt  glorify  Me!' 
Call! — as  a  little  child  calls  for  his  mother.  Call! 
— as  a  drowning  man  calls  for  help.  Call! — as  a 
frenzied  woman  calls  wildly  for  succor.  There  are 
great  emergencies  in  which  we  do  not  fastidiously 
choose  our  words.  It  is  not  the  mind  but  the  heart 
that,  at  such  moments,  gives  to  the  tongue  its  no- 
blest eloquence.  The  prayer  that  moves  Omnipo- 
tence to  pity,  and  summons  all  the  hosts  of  heaven 
to  help,  is  not  the  prayer  of  nicely  rounded  periods 
— Faultily  faultless,  icily  regular,  splendidly  null — 


Robinson  Crusoe's  Text  29 

but  the  prayer  of  passionate  entreaty.  It  is  a  call — 
a  call  such  as  a  doctor  receives  at  dead  of  night;  a 
call  such  as  the  fireman  receives  when  all  the  alarms 
are  clanging;  a  call  such  as  the  ships  receive  in 
mid-ocean,  when,  hurtling  through  the  darkness  and 
the  void,  there  comes  the  wireless  message,  'S.O.S.' 
'Call  upon  Me  in  the  day  of  trouble,  and  I  will  de- 
liver thee,  and  thou  shalt  glorify  Me.'  Had  the  text 
demanded  a  tinge  of  technicality  it  would  have  been 
useless  to  Robinson  Crusoe;  it  would  have  mocked 
the  simple  soul  of  poor  Mary  Avenel.  But  a  call! 
Robinson  Crusoe  can  call !  Mary  Avenel  can  call ! 
Anybody  can  call!  Wherefore,  'call,'  says  the  text, 
*ju^t  call,  and  He  will  deliver!' 

IV 

But  I  need  not  have  resorted  to  fiction  for  a  testi- 
mony to  the  value  and  efficacy  of  the  text — striking 
and  significant  as  that  testimony  is.  I  need  have 
summoned  neither  Daniel  I>efoe  nor  Sir  Walter 
Scott.  I  could  have  dispensed  with  both  Robinson 
Crusoe  and  Mary  Avenel.  I  could  have  called  a 
King  and  Queen  to  bear  all  the  witness  that  I 
wanted. 

King  Edward  the  Seventh! 

And  Queen  Alexandra! 

For  Robinson  Crusoe's  text  is  King  Edward's 
text;  and  Mary  Avenel's  text  is  Queen  Alexandra's 
text     There  are  men  and  women  still  living  who 


30  A  Handful  of  Stars 

remember  those  dark  and  dreadful  days  of  Decem- 
ber, 1871,  when  it  seemed  as  if  the  life  of  King 
Edward — ^then  Prince  of  Wales — hung  by  a  single 
thread.  Nobody  thought  of  anything  else;  the 
whole  world  seemed  to  surround  that  royal  sickbed ; 
the  Empire  was  in  a  state  of  breathless  suspense. 
Sunday,  the  tenth  of  December,  was  set  aside  as 
a  Day  of  Solemn  Intercession,  and  the  strained  in- 
tensity of  the  public  anxiety  reflected  itself  in 
crowded  but  hushed  congregations. 

And  what  was  going  on  at  the  inner  heart  of 
things?  Early  that  Sunday  morning,  the  Princess 
— afterwards  Queen  Alexandra — opened  her  Bible 
and  was  greeted  with  these  words:  'Call  upon  Me 
in  the  day  of  trouble,  and  I  will  deliver  thee,  and 
thou  shall  glorify  Me.'  A  little  later,  just  as  the 
Vicar  of  Sandringham,  the  Rev.  W.  L.  Onslow, 
was  preparing  to  enter  his  pulpit,  he  received  a 
note  from  the  Princess.  *My  husband  being,  thank 
God,  somewhat  better,'  she  wrote,  *I  am  coming  to 
church.  I  must  leave,  I  fear,  before  the  service  is 
concluded,  that  I  may  watch  by  his  bedside.  Can 
you  not  say  a  few  words  in  prayer  in  the  early  part 
of  the  service,  that  I  may  join  with  you  in  prayer 
for  my  husband  before  I  return  to  him?'  The  con- 
gregation was  deeply  affected  when  the  Princess 
appeared,  and  the  rector,  with  trembling  voice,  said : 
'The  prayers  of  the  congregation  are  earnestly 
sought  for  His  Royal  Highness,  the  Prince  of 
Wales,  who  is  now  most  seriously  ill.'    This  was  on 


Robinson  Crusoe's  Text  31 

December  the  tenth.  For  the  next  few  days  the 
Prince  hovered  between  Hfe  and  death.  The  crisis 
came  on  the  fourteenth,  which,  ominously  enough, 
was  the  anniversary  of  the  death  of  the  Prince  Con- 
sort. But,  whilst  the  superstitious  shook  their 
heads,  the  Princess  clung  desperately  and  believingly 
to  the  hope  that  the  text  had  brought  her.  And  that 
day,  in  a  way  that  was  almost  dramatic,  the  change 
came.  Sir  William  Gull,  the  royal  physician,  had 
done  all  that  the  highest  human  skill  could  suggest ; 
he  felt  that  the  issue  was  now  in  other  hands  than 
his.  He  was  taking  a  ^hort  walk  up  and  down  the 
terrace,  when  one  of  the  nurses  came  running  to 
him  with  pallid  face  and  startled  eyes.  'Oh,  come, 
Sir  William,'  she  said,  'there  is  a  change ;  the  Prince 
is  worse !'  And,  as  doctor  and  nurse  hurried  to- 
gether to  the  sick  room,  she  added  bitterly,  'I  do 
not  believe  God  answers  prayer!  Here  is  all  Eng- 
land praying  that  he  may  recover,  and  he's  going  to 
die!'  But  Sir  William  Gull's  first  glance  at  the 
Royal  patient  showed  him  that  the  change  was  for 
the  better.  From  that  moment  there  was  a  sure 
hope  of  the  Prince's  recovery,  and,  by  Christmas 
Day,  he  was  out  of  danger.  Later  on,  when  her 
husband's  restoration  was  complete,  the  Princess 
raised  a  monument  to  the  deliverance  that  she  had 
experienced.  She  presented  to  the  Sandringham 
Church  a  brass  lectern  bearing  this  inscription : 
*To  the  glory  of  God;  a  thank  offering  for  His 
mercy;  14th  December,   1871. — Alexandra.    When 


32  A  Handful  of  Stars 

I  was  in  trouble  I  called  upon  the  Lord,  and  He 
heard  me.' 

Nor  is  that  quite  the  end  of  the  story.  Thirty- 
years  later,  the  Prince  ascended  the  throne.  He 
was  to  have  been  crowned  on  June  26,  1902;  but 
again  he  was  stricken  down  by  serious  illness.  He 
recovered,  however,  and  the  Coronation  took  place 
on  the  ninth  of  August.  Those  familiar  with  the 
Coronation  Service  noticed  a  striking  innovation. 
The  words :  'When  I  was  in  trouble,  I  called  upon 
the  Lord,  and  He  heard  me,'  were  introduced  into 
one  of  the  prayers.  'The  words,'  Archdeacon  Wil- 
berforce  afterwards  explained,  'were  written  by  the 
King's  own  hand,  and  were  used  by  the  Archbishop 
at  His  Majesty's  express  command.' 

'Call  upon  Me  in  the  day  of  trouble,  and  I  will 
deliver  thee,  and  thou  shalt  glorify  Me,'  says  the 
text. 

'When  I  was  in  trouble,  I  called  upon  the  Lord, 
and  He  heard  me,'  said  King  Edward  and  Queen 
Alexandra. 

*I  was  in  trouble  through  my  sickness,  and  in 
trouble  through  my  sin,'  said  Robinson  Crusoe,  'and 
when  I  called  upon  the  Lord,  He  heard  and  de- 
livered me.' 

So  true  is  it  that  whosoever  shall  call  on  the  Name 
of  the  Lord,  the  same  shall  be  saved. 


Ill 

JAMES  CHALMERS'  TEXT 


He  was  *a  broth  of  a  boy,'  his  biographer  tells: 
us.  He  lived  chiefly  on  boots  and  boxes.  Eager  to 
know  what  lay  beyond  the  ranges,  he  wore  out  more 
boots  than  his  poor  parents  found  it  easy  to  pro- 
vide. Taunted  by  the  constant  vision  of  the  rest- 
less waters,  he  put  out  to  sea  in  broken  boxes  andi 
leaky  barrels,  that  he  might  follow  in  the  wake  of 
the  great  navigators.  He  was  a  born  adventurer. 
Almost  as  soon  as  he  first  opened  his  eyes  and 
looked  around  him,  he  felt  that  the  world  was  very 
wide  and  vowed  that  he  would  find  its  utmost  edges. 
From  his  explorations  of  the  hills  and  glens  around 
his  village  home,  he  often  returned  too  exhausted 
either  to  eat  or  sleep.  From  his  ventures  upon  the 
ocean  he  was  more  than  once  brought  home  on  a 
plank,  apparently  drowned.  'The  wind  and  the  sea 
were  his  playmates,'  we  are  told ;  'he  was  as  much  at 
home  in  the  water  as  on  the  land ;  in  fishing,  sailing, 
climbing  over  the  rocks,  and  wandering  among  the 
silent  hills,  he  spent  a  free,  careless,  happy  boyhood.' 
Every  day  had  its  own  romance,  its  hairbreadth 
escape,  its  thrilling  adventure. 

Therein  lies  the  difference  between  a  man  and  «l 

33 


34  A  Handful  of  Stars 

beast.  At  just  about  the  time  at  which  James 
Chalmers  was  born  in  Scotland,  Captain  Sturt  led 
his  famous  expedition  into  the  hot  and  dusty  heart 
of  Australia.  When  he  reached  Cooper's  Creek  on 
the  return  journey,  he  found  that  he  had  more 
horses  than  he  would  be  able  to  feed;  so  he  turned 
one  of  them  out  on  the  banks  of  the  creek  and  left 
it  there.  When  Burke  and  Wills  reached  Cooper's 
Creek  twenty  years  later,  the  horse  was  still  graz- 
ing peacefully  on  the  side  of  the  stream,  and  looked 
up  at  the  explorers  with  no  more  surprise  or  excite- 
ment than  it  would  have  shown  if  but  twenty  hours 
had  passed  since  it  last  saw  human  faces.  It  had 
found  air  to  breathe  and  water  to  drink  and  grass 
to  nibble;  what  did  it  care  about  the  world?  But 
with  man  it  is  otherwise.  He  wants  to  know  what 
is  on  the  other  side  of  the  hill,  what  is  on  the  other 
side  of  the  water,  what  is  on  the  other  side  of  the 
world!  If  he  cannot  go  North,  South,  East  and 
West  himself,  he  must  at  least  have  his  newspaper; 
and  the  newspaper  brings  all  the  ends  of  the  earth 
every  morning  to  his  doorstep  and  his  breakfast- 
table.  This,  I  say,  is  the  difference  between  a  beast 
and  a  man;  and  James  Chalmers — known  in  New 
Guinea  as  the  most  magnificent  specimen  of  human- 
ity on  the  islands — was  every  inch  a  man. 

II 

But  his  text !    What  was  James  Chalmers'  text  ? 


James  Chalmers'  Text  35 

When  he  was  eighteen  years  of  age,  Scotland  found 
herself  in  the  throes  of  a  great  religious  revival. 
In  the  sweep  of  this  historic  movement,  a  couple 
of  evangelists  from  the  North  of  Ireland  announce 
that  they  will  conduct  a  series  of  evangelistic  meet- 
ings at  Inverary.  But  Chalmers  and  a  band  of 
daring  young  spirits  under  his  leadership  feel  that 
this  is  an  innovation  which  they  must  strenuously 
resist.  They  agree  to  break  up  the  meetings.  A 
friend,  however,  with  much  difficulty  persuades 
Chalmers  to  attend  the  first  meeting  and  judge  for 
himself  whether  or  not  his  project  is  a  worthy 
one. 

'It  was  raining  hard,'  he  says,  in  some  autobio- 
graphical notes  found  among  his  treasures  after  the 
massacre,  *it  was  raining  hard,  but  I  started ;  and  on 
arriving  at  the  bottom  of  the  stairs  I  listened  whilst 
they  sang  "All  people  that  on  earth  do  dwell"  to  the 
tune  "Old  Hundred,"  and  I  thought  I  had  never 
heard  such  singing  before — so  solemn,  yet  so  joyful. 
I  ascended  the  steps  and  entered.  There  was  a  large 
congregation  and  all  intensely  in  earnest.  The 
younger  of  the  evangelists  was  the  first  to  speak. 
He  announced  as  his  text  the  words :  "The  Spirit 
and  the  Bride  say.  Come;  and  let  him  that  heareth 
say,  Com^e;  and  let  him  that  is  athirst  come;  and 
whosoever  will,  let  him  take  the  water  of  life  freely." 
He  spoke  directly  to  me.  I  felt  it  much ;  but  at  the 
close  I  hurried  away  back  to  town.  I  returned  the 
Bible  to  the  friend  who,  having  persuaded  me  to  go, 


36  A  Handful  of  Stars 

had  lent  it  to  me,  but  I  was  too  upset  to  speak  much 
to  him.' 

On  the  following  Sunday  night,  he  was, 
he  says,  'pierced  through  and  through,  and  felt  lost 
beyond  all  hope  of  salvation.'  On  the  Monday,  the 
local  minister,  the  Rev.  Gilbert  Meikle,  who  had 
exercised  a  deep  influence  over  his  early  childhood, 
came  to  see  him  and  assured  him  that  the  blood  of 
Jesus  Christ,  God's  Son,  could  cleanse  him  from  all 
sin.  This  timely  visit  convinced  him  that  deliver- 
ance was  at  any  rate  possible.  Gradually  he  came 
to  feel  that  the  voices  to  which  he  was  listening 
were,  in  reality,  the  Voice  of  God.  *Then,'  he  says, 
*I  believed  unto  salvation.' 

'He  felt  that  the  voices  to  which  he  was  listening 
were,  in  reality,  the  Voice  of  God.'  That  is  pre- 
cisely what  the  text  says.  'The  Spirit  and  the  Bride 
say.  Come.' '  The  Bride  only  says  'Come'  because 
the  Spirit  says  'Come' ;  the  Church  only  says  'Come' 
because  her  Lord  says  'Come' ;  the  evangelists  only 
said  'Come'  because  the  Voice  Divine  said  'Come.' 
*He  felt  that  the  voices  to  which  he  was  listening 
were,  in  reality,  the  Voice  of  God,  and  he  believed 
unto  salvation.' 

The  Spirit  said,  Come! 

The  Bride  said.  Come! 

Let  him  that  is  athirst  come! 

'I  was  athirst,'  says  Chalmers,  'and  I  came!' 

And  thus  a  great  text  began,  in  a  great  soul,  the 
manufacture  of  a  great  history. 


James  Chalmers'  Text  37 

III 

Forty  years  later  a  thrill  of  horror  electrified  the 
world  when  the  cables  flashed  from  land  to  land 
the  terrible  tidings  that  James  Chalmers,  the  most 
picturesque  and  romantic  figure  in  the  religious  life 
of  his  time,  had  been  killed  and  eaten  by  the  Fly 
River  cannibals.  It  is  the  evening  of  Easter  Sun- 
day. It  has  for  years  been  the  dream  of  his  life  to 
navigate  the  Fly  River  and  evangelize  the  villages 
along  its  banks.  And  now  he  is  actually  doing  it 
at  last.  'He  is  away  up  the  Fly  River,'  wrote  Rob- 
ert Louis  Stevenson.  'It  is  a  desperate  venture, 
but  he  is  quite  a  Livingstone  card!'  Stevenson 
thought  Chalmers  all  gold.  'He  is  a  rowdy,  but  he 
is  a  hero.  You  can't  weary  me  of  that  fellow.  He 
is  as  big  as  a  house  and  far  bigger  than  any  church. 
He  took  me  fairly  by  storm  for  the  most  attractive, 
simple,  brave  and  interesting  man  in  the  whole  Pa- 
cific' 'I  wonder,'  Stevenson  wrote  to  Mrs. 
Chalmers,  'I  wonder  if  even  you  know  what  it 
means  to  a  man  like  me — a  man  fairly  critical,  a 
man  of  the  world — to  meet  one  who  represents  the 
essential,  and  who  is  so  free  from  the  formal,  from 
the  grimace.'  But  I  digress.  As  Stevenson  says, 
Mr.  Chalmers  is  away  up  the  Fly  River,  a  desperate 
venture !  But  he  is  boisterously  happy  about  it,  and 
at  sunset  on  this  Easter  Sunday  evening  they  anchor 
off  a  populous  settlement  just  round  a  bend  of  the 
river.     The  natives,   coming  off   in  their   canoes, 


38  A  Handful  of  Stars 

swarm  onto  the  vessel.  With  some  difficulty,  Mr. 
Chalmers  persuades  them  to  leave  the  ship,  promis- 
ing them  that  he  will  himself  visit  them  at  daybreak. 
The  savages,  bent  on  treachery  and  slaughter,  pull 
ashore  and  quickly  dispatch  runners  with  messages 
to  all  the  villages  around.  When,  early  next  morn- 
ing, Mr.  Chalmers  lands,  he  is  surprised  at  finding 
a  vast  assemblage  gathered  to  receive  him.  He  is 
accompanied  by  Mr.  Tomkins — his  young  colleague, 
not  long  out  from  England — and  by  a  party  of  ten 
native  Christians.  They  are  told  that  a  great  feast 
has  been  prepared  in  their  honor,  and  they  are  led 
to  a  large  native  house  to  partake  of  it.  But,  as  he 
enters,  Mr.  Chalmers  is  felled  from  behind  with  a 
stone  club,  stabbed  with  a  cassowary  dagger,  and 
instantly  beheaded.  Mr.  Tomkins  and  the  native 
Christians  are  similarly  massacred.  The  villages 
around  are  soon  the  scenes  of  horrible  cannibal 
orgies.  T  cannot  believe  it!'  exclaimed  Dr.  Parker 
from  the  pulpit  of  the  City  Temple,  on  the  day  on 
which  the  tragic  news  reached  England,  'I  cannot 
believe  it !  I  do  not  want  to  believe  it !  Such  a  mys- 
tery of  Providence  makes  it  hard  for  our  strained 
faith  to  recover  itself.  Yet  Jesus  was  murdered. 
Paul  was  murdered.  Many  missionaries  have  been 
murdered.  When  I  think  of  that  side  of  the  case,  I 
cannot  but  feel  that  our  honored  and  noble-minded 
friend  has  joined  a  great  assembly.  James  Chalmers 
was  one  of  the  truly  great  missionaries  of  the  world. 
He  was,  in  all  respects,  a  noble  and  kingly  charac- 


James  Chalmers'  Text  39 

ten'  And  so  it  was  whispered  from  lip  to  lip  that 
James  Chalmers,  the  Greatheart  of  New  Guinea, 
was  dead,  dead,  dead;  although  John  Oxenham  de- 
nied it. 

Greatheart  is  dead,  they  say ! 

Greatheart  is  dead,  they  say  ! 

Nor  dead,  nor  sleeping !     He  lives  on !     His  name 

Shall  kindle  many  a  heart  to  equal  flame; 

The  fire  he  kindled  shall  burn  on  and  on 

Till  all  the  darkness  of  the  lands  be  gone, 

And  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth  be  won, 

And  one ! 

A  soul  so  fiery  sweet  can  never  die 

But  lives  and  loves  and  works  through  all  eternity. 

Yes.  lives  and  loves  and  works!  'There  will  be 
much  to  do  in  heaven,'  he  wrote  to  an  old  comrade 
in  one  of  the  last  letters  he  ever  penned.  'I  guess 
I  shall  have  good  mission  work  to  do;  great,  brave 
work  for  Christ !  He  will  have  to  find  it,  for  I  can 
be  nothing  else  than  a  missionary !'  And  so,  per- 
chance, James  Chalmers  is  a  missionary  still! 

IV 

Now,  underlying  this  brave  story  of  a  noble  life 
and  a  martyr-death  is  a  great  principle;  and  it  is 
the  principle  that,  if  we  look,  we  shall  find  em- 
bedded in  the  very  heart  of  James  Chalmers'  text. 
No  law  of  life  is  more  vital.  Let  us  return  to  that 
evangelistic  meeting  held  on  that  drenching  night 
at  Inverary,  and  let  us  catch  once  more  those  match- 


40  A  Handful  of  Stars 

less  cadences  that  won  the  heart  of  Chalmers !  ^The 
Spirit  and  the  Bride  say,  Come;  and  let  him  that 
■heareth  say,  Come;  and  let  him  that  is  athirst  come; 
and  whosoever  will,  let  him  take  the  water  of  life 
jreely! 

'Let  him  that  is  athirst  come!'  '1  was  athirst/ 
:says  Chalmers,  'so  I  came!' 

'Let  him  that  heareth  say,  Come!'  James 
Chalmers  heard;  he  felt  that  he  must  say;  that  is 
the  connecting  link  between  the  evangelistic  meet- 
ing at  Inverary  and  the  triumph  and  tragedy  of  New 
Guinea. 

'Let  him  that  heareth,  say!' — ^that  is  the  principle 
•embedded  in  the  text.  The  soul's  exports  must 
keep  pace  with  the  soul's  imports.  What  I  have 
freely  received,  I  must  as  freely  give.  The  boons 
that  have  descended  to  me  from  a  remote  ancestry 
I  must  pass  on  with  interest  to  a  remote  posterity. 
The  benedictions  that  my  parents  breathed  on  me 
must  be  conferred  by  me  upon  my  children.  'Let 
him  that  heareth,  say!'  What  comes  into  the  City 
of  Mansoul  at  Ear  Gate  must  go  out  again  at  Lip 
Gate.  The  auditor  of  one  day  must  become  the 
orator  of  the  next.  It  is  a  very  ancient  principle. 
'He  that  reads,'  says  the  prophet,  'must  run!'  'He 
that  sees  must  spread!'  With  those  quick  eyes  of 
his,  James  Chalmers  saw  this  at  a  glance.  He  recog- 
nized that  the  kingdom  of  Christ  could  be  estab- 
lished in  no  other  way.  He  saw  that  the  Gospel 
could  have  been  offered  him  on  no  other  terms. 


James  Chalmers'  Text  4z 

What,  therefore,  he  had  with  such  wonder  heard, 
he  began,  with  great  dehght,  to  proclaim.  Almost 
at  once  he  accepted  a  Sunday  school  class ;  the  fol- 
lowing year  he  began  preaching  in  those  very  vil- 
lages through  which,  as  a  boy,  his  exploratory  wan- 
derings had  so  often  taken  him;  a  year  later  he 
became  a  city  missionary,  that  he  might  pass  on  the 
message  of  the  Spirit  and  the  Bride  to  the  teeming 
poor  of  Glasgow;  and,  twelve  months  later  still,  he 
entered  college,  in  order  to  equip  himself  for  service 
in  the  uttermost  ends  of  the  earth.  His  boyish 
passion  for  books  and  boxes  had  been  sanctified  at 
last  by  his  consecration  to  a  great  heroic  mission. 

V 

'Let  him  that  is  athirst  come!'  *I  was  athirst,' 
says  Chalmers,  'and  I  came!' 

'Let  him  that  heareth  say.  Come!'  And  Chalmers, 
having  heard,  said  'Come!'  and  said  it  with  effect. 
Dr.  Lawes  speaks  of  one  hundred  and  thirty  mission 
stations  which  he  established  at  New  Guinea.  And 
look  at  this !  'On  the  first  Sabbath  in  every  month 
not  less  than  three  thousand  men  and  women  gather 
devotedly  round  the  table  of  the  Lord,  reverently 
commemorating  the  event  which  means  so  much  to 
them  and  to  all  the  world.  Many  of  them  were 
known  to  Chalmers  as  savages  in  feathers  and  war- 
paint.  Now,  clothed  and  in  their  right  mind,  the 
wild,  savage  look  all  gone,  they  form  part  of  the 


42  A  Handful  of  Stars 

Body  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  and  are  members 
of  His  Church.  Many  of  the  pastors  who  preside 
at  the  Lord's  Table  bear  on  their  breasts  the  tattoo 
marks  that  indicate  that  their  spears  had  been  im- 
brued with  human  blood.  Now  sixty-four  of  them, 
thanks  to  Mr.  Chalmers'  influence,  are  teachers, 
preachers  and  missionaries.'  They,  too,  having  lis- 
tened, proclaim;  having  received,  give;  having 
heard,  say;  having  been  auditors,  have  now  become 
orators.  They  have  read  and  therefore  they  run. 
Having  believed  with  the  heart,  they  therefore  con- 
fess with  the  mouth.  This  is  not  only  a  law  of 
life;  it  is  the  law  of  the  life  everlasting.  It  is  only 
by  loyalty  to  this  golden  rule,  on  the  part  of  all 
who  hear  the  Spirit  and  the  Bride  say  Come,  that 
the  kingdoms  of  this  world  can  become  the  king- 
doms of  our  God  and  of  His  Christ.  It  is  the  secret 
of  world-conquest;  and,  besides  it,  there  is  no  other. 

VI 

'The  Spirit  and  the  Bride  say,  Come;  and  let 
him  that  heareth  say,  Come;  and  let  him  that  is 
athirst  come;  and  whosoever  will,  let  him  take  the 
water  of  life  freely.' 

'Let  him  that  is  athirst  come!' 

'Let  him  that  heareth  say,  Come!' 

I  have  somewhere  read  that,  out  in  the  solitudes 
of  the  great  dusty  desert,  when  a  caravan  is  in 
peril  of  perishing  for  want  of  water,  they  give  one 


James  Chalmers'  Text  43 

camel  its  head  and  let  him  go.  The  fine  instincts 
of  the  animal  will  lead  him  unerringly  to  the  re- 
freshing spring.  As  soon  as  he  is  but  a  speck  on 
the  horizon,  one  of  the  Arabs  mounts  his  camel  and 
sets  off  in  the  direction  that  the  liberated  animal 
has  taken.  When,  in  his  turn,  he  is  scarcely  dis- 
tinguishable, another  Arab  mounts  and  follows. 
When  the  loose  camel  discovers  water,  the  first 
Arab  turns  and  waves  to  the  second ;  the  second  to 
the  third,  and  so  on,  until  all  the  members  of  the 
party  are  gathered  at  the  satisfying  spring.  As  each 
man  sees  the  beckoning  hand,  he  turns  and  beckons 
to  the  man  behind  him.  He  that  sees,  signals;  he 
that  hears,  utters.  It  is  the  law  of  the  life  everlast- 
ing; it  is  the  fundamental  principle  of  James 
Chalmers'  text  and  of  James  Chalmers'  life. 

'Let  him  that  is  athirst  come!'  'I  was  athirst,' 
says  Chalmers,  *so  I  camel' 

I  heard  the  voice  of  Jesus  say, 

'Behold,  I  freely  give 
The  living  water;  thirsty  one, 

Stoop  down,  and  drink,  and  live.' 
I  came  to  Jesus,  and  I  drank 

Of  that  life-giving  stream; 
My  thirst  was  quenched,  my  soul  revived. 

And  now  I  live  in  Him. 

'And  now  I  live  in  Him.'  The  life  that  James 
Chalmers  lived  in  his  Lord  was  a  life  so  winsome 
that  he  charmed  all  hearts,  a  life  so  contagious  that 
savages  became  saints  beneath  his  magnetic  influ- 


44  A  Handful  of  Stars 

ence.  He  had  heard,  at  Inverary,  the  Spirit  and 
the  Bride  say,  Come!  And  he  esteemed  it  a  privi- 
lege beyond  all  price  to  be  permitted  to  make  th-e 
abodes  of  barbarism  and  the  habitations  of  cruelty 
re-echo  the  matchless  music  of  that  mighty  mono- 
syllable. 


IV 

SYDNEY  CARTON'S  TEXT 


Memory  is  the  soul's  best  minister.  Sydney  Car- 
ton found  it  so.  On  the  greatest  night  of  his  life — 
the  night  on  which  he  resolved  to  lay  down  his  life 
for  his  friend — a  text  swept  suddenly  into  his  mind, 
and,  from  that  moment,  it  seemed  to  be  written 
everywhere.  He  was  in  Paris;  the  French  Revolu- 
tion was  at  its  height;  sixty-three  shuddering  vic- 
tims had  been  borne  that  very  day  to  the  guillotine; 
each  day's  toll  was  heavier  than  that  of  the  day  be- 
fore; no  man's  life  was  safe.  Among  the  prisoners 
awaiting  death  in  the  Conciergerie  was  Charles 
Darnay,  the  husband  of  her  whom  Sydney  himself 
had  loved  with  so  much  devotion  but  so  little  hope. 

'O  Miss  Manette,'  he  had  said,  on  the  only  oc- 
casion on  which  he  had  revealed  his  passion,  'when, 
in  the  days  to  come,  you  see  your  own  bright  beauty 
springing  up  anew  at  your  feet,  think  now  and  then 
that  there  is  a  man  who  would  give  his  life  to  keep 
a  life  you  love  beside  you!' 

And  now  that  hour  had  come.  It  happened  that 
Charles  Darnay  and  Sydney  Carton  were,  in  form 
and    feature,   extraordinarily   alike.      Darnay   was 

45 


46  A  Handful  of  Stars 

doomed  to  die  on  the  guillotine:  Carton  was  free. 
For  the  first  time  in  his  wayward  life,  Sydney  saw 
his  course  clearly  before  him.  His  years  had  been 
spent  aimlessly,  but  now  he  set  his  face  like  a  flint 
towards  a  definite  goal.  He  stepped  out  into  the 
moonlight,  not  recklessly  or  negligently,  but  'with 
the  settled  manner  of  a  tired  man  who  had  wan- 
dered and  struggled  and  got  lost,  but  who  at  length 
struck  into  his  road  and  saw  its  end.'  He  would 
find  some  way  of  taking  Darnay's  place  in  the 
gloomy  prison ;  he  would,  by  his  substitution,  restore 
her  husband  to  Lucy's  side;  he  would  make  his  life 
sublime  at  its  close.  His  career  should  resemble  a 
day  that,  fitful  and  overcast,  ends  at  length  in  a 
glorious  sunset.  He  would  save  his  life  by  losing 
it! 

It  was  at  that  great  moment  that  memory  exer- 
cised its  sacred  ministry  upon  the  soul  of  Sydney 
Carton.  As  he  paced  the  silent  streets,  dark  with 
heavy  shadows,  the  moon  and  the  clouds  sailing 
high  above  him,  he  suddenly  recalled  the  solemn 
and  beautiful  words  which  he  had  heard  read  at 
his  father's  grave :  7  am  the  Resurrection  and  the 
Life;  he  that  helieveth  in  Me,  though  he  were  dead, 
yet  shall  he  live;  and  whosoever  liveth  and  helieveth 
in  Me  shall  never  die.'  Sydney  did  not  ask  himself 
why  the  words  had  rushed  upon  him  at  that  hour, 
although,  as  Dickens  says,  the  reason  was  not  far 
to  seek.  But  he  kept  repeating  them.  And,  when 
he  stopped,  the  air  seemed  full  of  them.    The  great 


Sydney  Carton's  Text  47 

words  were  written  across  the  houses  on  either  side 
of  him;  he  looked  up,  and  they  were  inscribed  across 
the  dark  clouds  and  the  clear  sky;  the  very  echoes  of 
his  footsteps  reiterated  them.  When  the  sun  rose, 
it  seemed  to  strike  those  words — the  burden  of  the 
night — straight  and  warm  to  his  heart  in  its  long 
bright  rays.  Night  and  day  were  both  saying  the 
same  thing.  He  heard  it  everywhere:  he  saw  it  in 
everything — 

7  am  the  Resurrection  and  the  Life;  he  that  be- 
lieveth  in  Me,  though  he  were  dead,  yet  shall  he 
live;  and  whosoever  liveth  and  believe th  in  Me  shall 
never  die.' 

That  was  Sydney  Carton's  text. 

II 

It  is  a  great  thing — a  very  great  thing — to  be 
able  to  save  those  you  love  by  dying  for  them.  I 
well  remember  sitting  in  my  study  at  Hobart  one 
evening,  when  there  came  a  ring  at  the  bell.  A  mo- 
ment later  a  man  whom  I  knew  intimately  was 
shown  in.  I  had  seen  him  a  few  weeks  earlier,  yet, 
as  I  looked  upon  him  that  night,  I  could  scarcely 
believe  it  was  the  same  man.  He  seemed  twenty 
years  older;  his  hair  was  gray;  his  face  furrowed 
and  his  back  bent.  I  was  staggered  at  the  change. 
He  sat  down  and  burst  into  tears. 

'Oh,  my  boy,  my  boy!'  he  sobbed. 

I  let  him  take  his  time,  and,  when  he  had  re- 


4$  A  Handful  of  Staxs 

gained  his  •self-possession,  he  told  me  of  his  son's 
great  sin  and  shame. 

*I  have  mentioned  this  to  nobody/  he  said,  'but 
I  could  keep  it  to  myself  no  longer.  I  knew  that 
you  would  understand.' 

And  then  he  broke  down  again.  I  can  see  him 
now  as  he  sits  there,  rocking  himself  in  his  agony, 
and  moaning: 

'If  only  I  could  have  died  for  him!  If  only  I 
could  have  died  for  him !' 

But  he  couldn't!  That  was  the  torture  of  it! 
I  remember  how  his  heart-broken  cry  rang  in  my 
ears  for  days;  and  on  the  following  Sunday  there 
was  only  one  subject  on  which  I  could  preach. 
'And  the  king  was  much  moved,  and  went  up  to  the 
chamber  over  the  gate  and  wept;  and  as  he  went 
he  cried:  0  my  son  Absalom!  my  son,  my  son  Ab- 
salom! Would  God  I  had  died  for  thee,  0  Absalom, 
my  son,  my  son!' 

It  was  the  unutterable  grief  of  David,  and  of  my 
poor  friend,  that  they  could  not  save  those  they 
loved  by  dying  for  them.  It  was  the  joy  of  Sydney 
Carton  that  he  could!  He  contrived  to  enter  the 
Conciergerie ;  made  his  way  to  Darnay's  cell; 
changed  clothes  with  him;  hurried  him  forth;  and 
then  resigned  himself  to  his  fate.  Later  on,  a  fel- 
low prisoner,  a  little  seamstress,  approached  him. 
She  had  known  Damay  and  had  learned  to  trust 
him.  She  asked  if  she  might  ride  with  him  to  the 
scaffold. 


Sydney  Carton's  Text  49« 

'I  am  not  afraid,'  she  said,  'but  I  am  little  and 
weak,  and,  if  you  will  let  me  ride  with  you  and  hold 
your  hand,  it  will  give  me  courage !' 

As  the  patient  eyes  were  lifted  to  his  face,  he  saw 
a  sudden  doubt  in  them,  and  then  astonishment.. 
She  had  discovered  that  he  was  not  Darnay. 

'Are  you  dying  for  him?'  she  whispered. 

'For  him — and  his  wife  and  child'.    Hush!  Yes!' 

'Oh,  you  will  let  me  hold  your  brave  hand, 
stranger  ?' 

'Hush !    Yes,  my  poor  sister ;  to  the  last !' 

Nobody  has  ever  read  A  Tale  of  Two  Cities  with- 
out feeling  that  this  was  the  moment  of  Sydney 
Carton's  supreme  triumph. 

'It  is,'  he  said — and  they  are  the  last  words  in 
the  book — 'it  is  a  far,  far  better  thing  that  I  do  than 
I  have  ever  done!' 

He  had  never  tasted  a  joy  to  be  compared  witb 
this.  He  was  able  to  save  those  he  loved  by  dying 
for  them ! 

That  is  precisely  the  joy  of  the  Cross !  That  was 
the  light  that  shone  upon  the  Saviour's  path  through 
all  the  darkness  of  the  world's  first  Easter.  That  is 
why,  when  He  took  the  bread  and  wine — the  em- 
blems of  His  body  about  to  be  broken  and  His  blood 
about  to  be  shed — He  gave  thanks.  It  is  that — 
and  that  alone — that  accounts.-  for  the  fact  that  He 
entered  the  Garden  of  Gethsemane  with  a  song  upon 
His  lips.  It  was  for  the  joy  that  was  set  before  Him, 
that  He  endured  the  Cross^  despising  its  shame! 


50  A  Handful  of  Stars 

'Death!'  He  said.  'What  of  Death?  /  am  the 
Life,  not  only  of  Myself,  but  of  all  who  place  their 
hands  in  Mine!' 

'The  Grave!  What  of  the  Grave?  /  am  the 
Resurrection!' 

*I  am  the  Resurrection  and  the  Life;  he  that  be- 
lieveth  in  Me,  though  he  were  dead,  yet  shall  he  live; 
and  whosoever  liveth  and  believeth  in  Me  shall  never 
die.' 

He  felt  that  it  was  a  great  thing — a  very  great 
thing — to  be  able  to  save  those  He  loved  by  dying 
for  them. 

Ill 

7  am  the  Resurrection!' — ^those  were  the  words 
that  Sydney  Carton  saw  written  on  land  and  on 
water,  on  earth  and  on  sky,  on  the  night  on  which 
he  made  up  his  mind  to  die.  7  am  the  Resurrec- 
tion!' They  were  the  words  that  he  had  heard  read 
beside  his  father's  grave.  They  are  the  words  that 
we  echo,  in  challenge  and  defiance,  over  all  our 
graves.  The  rubric  of  the  Church  of  England  re- 
quires its  ministers  to  greet  the  dead  at  the  entrance 
to  the  churchyard  with  the  words :  7  am  the  Resur- 
rection and  the  Life' ;  and,  following  the  same  sure 
instinct,  the  ministers  of  all  the  other  Churches 
have  adopted  a  very  similar  practice.  The  earth 
seems  to  be  a  garden  of  graves.  We  speak  of  those 
who  have  passed  from  us  as  'the  great  majority.' 


Sydney  Carton's  Text  51 

We  appear  to  be  conquered.  But  it  is  all  an  il- 
lusion. 

*0  Grave !'  we  ask,  in  every  burial  service,  'where 
is  thy  victory?'  And  the  question  answers  itself. 
The  victory  does  not  exist.  The  struggle  is  not  yet 
ended,    '/  am  the  Resurrection!' 

'I  am  the  Life!' — that  is  what  all  the  echoes  were 
saying  as  Sydney  Carton,  cherishing  a  great  heroic 
purpose  in  his  heart,  paced  the  deserted  streets  that 
night. 

7  am  the  Life!  I  am  the  Life!' 

'He  that  believeth  in  Me,  though  he  were  dead, 
yet  shall  he  live!' 

'Whosoever  believeth  in  Me  shall  never  die!' 

That  being  so,  what  does  death  matter?  'O, 
death!'  we  cry,  'where  is  thy  sting?'  and  once  more 
the  question  answers  itself. 

'O  Death,  where  is  thy  sting?' — 7  am  the  Life!' 

'O  Grave,  where  is  thy  victory?' — 7  am  the  Res- 
urrection!' 

The  Life  and  the  Resurrection!  7  am  the  Res- 
urrection and  the  Life!' 

The  text  that  he  saw  in  every  sight,  and  heard 
in  every  sound,  made  all  the  difference  to  Sydney 
Carton.  The  end  soon  came,  and  this  is  how  Dick- 
ens tells  the  story. 

The  tumbrils  arrive  at  the  guillotine.  The  little 
seamstress  is  ordered  to  go  first.  'They  solemnly 
bless  each  other.  The  thin  hand  does  not  tremble 
as  he  releases  it.     Nothing  worse  than  a  sweet. 


52  A  Handful  of  Stars 

bright  constancy  is  in  the  patient  face.  She  is  gone. 
The  knitting  women,  who  count  the  fallen  heads, 
murmur  twenty-two.     And  then — 

'I  am  the  Resurrection  and  the  Life;  he  that  he- 
lieveth  in  Me,  though  he  were  dead,  yet  shall  he  live; 
and  whosoever  liveth  and  believeth  in  Me  shall  never 
die.' 

They  said  of  him  about  the  city  that  night  that  it 
was  the  peacefullest  man's  face  ever  beheld  there. 
Many  added  that  he  looked  sublime  and  prophetic. 

/  am  the  Resurrection!  0  Grave,  where  is  thy 
victory  f 

I  am  the  Life!  O  Death,  where  is  thy  stingf 

IV 

But  there  was  more  in  Sydney  Carton's  expe- 
rience than  we  have  yet  seen.  It  happens  that  this 
great  saying  about  the  Resurrection  and  the  Life 
is  not  only  Sydney  Carton's  text;  it  is  Frank  Bul- 
len's  text;  and  Frank  Bullen's  experience  may  help 
us  to  a  deeper  perception  of  Sydney  Carton's.  In 
his  With  Christ  at  Sea,  Frank  Bullen  has  a  chapter 
entitled  'The  Dawn.'  It  is  the  chapter  in  which  he 
describes  his  conversion.  He  tells  how,  at  a  meeting 
held  in  a  sail-loft  at  Port  Chalmers,  in  New  Zea- 
land, he  was  profoundly  impressed.  After  the 
service,  a  Christian  worker — whom  I  myself  knew 
well — engaged  him  in  conversation.  He  opened  a 
New  Testament  and  read  these  words:    7  am  the 


Sydney  Carton's  Tert  53 

Resurrection  and  the  Life;  he  that  believeth  in  Me^ 
though  he  were  dead,  yet  shall  he  live;  and  who- 
soever liveth  and  believeth  in  Me  shall  never  die.' 
The  earnest  little  gentleman  pointed  out  the  in- 
sistence on  faith :  the  phrase  'believeth  in  Me'  occurs 
twice  in  the  text :  faith  and  life  go  together.  Would 
Frank  Bullen  exercise  that  faith? 

'Every  word  spoken  by  the  little  man  went  right 
to  my  heart,'  Mr.  Bullen  assures  us,  'and,  when  he 
ceased,  there  was  an  appeal  in  his  eyes  that  was 
even  more  eloquent  than  his  words.  But  beyond 
the  words  and  the  look  was  the  interpretation  of 
them  to  me  by  some  mysterious  agency  beyond  my 
comprehension.  For,  in  a  moment,  the  hidden  mys- 
tery was  made  clear  to  me,  and  I  said  quietly,  "I  see, 
sir;  and  I  believe!"  "Let  us  thank  God!"  answered 
the  little  man,  and  together  we  knelt  down  by  the 
bench.  There  was  no  extravagant  joy,  no  glorious 
bursting  into  light  and  liberty,  such  as  I  have  read 
about  as  happening  on  those  occasions;  it  was  the 
satisfaction  of  having  found  one's  way  after  long 
groping  in  darkness  and  misery — the  way  that  led 
to  peace.' 

Now  the  question  is :  did  those  words — the  words 
that  came  with  such  power  to  Frank  Bullen  in  the 
New  Zealand  sail-loft,  and  to  Sydney  Carton  in  the 
Paris  streets — have  the  same  effect  upon  both  ?  Did 
they  lead  both  of  them  to  penitence  and  faith  and 
peace?  I  think  they  did.  Let  us  return  to  Sydney 
Carton   as  the   sun   is   rising  on  that   memorable 


54  A  Handful  of  Stars 

morning  on  which  he  sees  the  text  everywhere.  He 
leaves  the  streets  in  which  he  has  wandered  by 
moonhght  and  walks  beside  a  stream. 

'A  trading-boat,  with  a  sail  of  the  softened  color 
.of  a  dead  leaf,  glided  into  his  view,  floated  by  him, 
and  died  away.  As  its  silent  track  in  the  water  dis- 
appeared, the  prayer  that  had  broken  up  out  of  his 
heart  for  a  merciful  consideration  of  all  his  poor 
blindnesses  and  errors  ended  in  the  words :  "I  am 
the  Resurrection  and  the  Life." ' 

'He  that  believeth  in  Me  .  .  .  whosoever  believ- 
eth  in  Me!' — the  insistent  demand  for  faith. 

'He  that  believeth  in  Me!' — Sydney  Carton  be- 
lieved and  found  peace. 

'He  that  believeth  in  Me!' — Frank  Bullen  be- 
lieved and  found  peace. 

Paul  has  a  classical  passage  in  which  he  shows 
that  those  who  have  passed  through  experiences 
such  as  these,  have  themselves  'risen  with  Christ 
into  newness  of  life.' 

Risen  with  Christ!  They  have  found  the  Resur- 
rection! 

Newness  of  life!    They  have  found  the  Life! 

In  his  Death  in  the  Desert,  Browning  describes 
the  attempts  that  were  made  to  revive  the  sinking 
man.  It  seemed  quite  hopeless.  The  most  that  he 
would  do  was — 

To  smile  a  little,  as  a  sleeper  does. 

If  any  dear  one  call  him,  touch  his  face — 

And  smiles  and  loves,  but  will  not  be  disturbed. 


Sydney  Carton's  Text  55 

Then,  all  at  once,  the  boy  who  had  been  assisting 
in  these  proceedings,  moved  by  some  swift  inspira- 
tion, sprang  from  his  knees  and  proclaimed  a  text : 
7  am  the  Resurrection  and  the  Life!'  As  if  by 
magic,  consciousness  revisited  the  prostrate  form; 
the  man  opened  his  eyes;  sat  up;  stared  about  him; 
and  then  began  to  speak.  A  wondrous  virtue 
seemed  to  lurk  in  the  majestic  words  that  the  boy 
recited.  By  that  virtue  Sydney  Carton,  Frank  Bul- 
len,  and  a  host  of  others  passed  from  death  into 
life  everlasting. 

V 

I  began  by  saying  that  it  is  a  great  thing — a  very 
great  thing — to  be  able  to  save  those  you  love  by 
dying  for  them, 

I  close  by  stating  the  companion  truth.  It  is  a 
great  thing — a  very  great  thing — to  have  been  died 
for. 

On  the  last  page  of  his  book  Dickens  tells  us 
what  Sydney  Carton  would  have  seen  and  said  if, 
on  the  scaffold,  it  had  been  given  him  to  read  the 
future. 

*I  see,'  he  would  have  exclaimed,  '1  see  the  lives 
for  which  I  lay  down  my  life — peaceful,  useful, 
prosperous  and  happy — in  that  England  which  I 
shall  see  no  more.  I  see  her  with  a  child  upon  her 
bosom  who  bears  my  name.  I  see  that  I  hold  a  sanc- 
tuary in  all  their  hearts,  and  in  the  hearts  of  their 
descendants,  generations  hence.     I  see  her,  an  old 


^6  A  Handful  of  Stars 

woman,  weeping  for  me  on  the  anniversary  of  this 
day.  I  see  her  and  her  husband,  their  course  done, 
lying  side  by  side  in  their  last  earthly  bed;  and  I 
know  that  each  was  not  more  honored  and  held 
sacred  in  the  other's  soul  than  I  was  in  the  souls 
of  both!' 

*I  see  that  I  hold  a  sanctuary  in  all  their  hearts!' 
— it  is  a  lovely  phrase. 

It  is  a  great  thing — a  very  great  thing — to  have 
been  died  for! 

Wherefore  let  each  man  be  at  some  pains  to  build 
in  his  heart  a  sanctuary  to  Him  who,  for  us  men 
and  for  our  salvation,  laid  down  His  life  with  a 
song! 


V 

EBENEZER  ERSKINE'S  TEXT 


It  is  a  lovely  Sunday  afternoon  in  the  early  sum- 
mer of  the  year  1690.  The  graceful  and  heathery 
path  that  winds  its  way  along  the  banks  of  the 
Tweed,  from  the  stately  ruins  of  Melrose  to  the 
crumbling  gables  of  Dryburgh,  is  in  its  glory.  The 
wooded  track  by  the  waterside  is  luxuriating  in 
bright  sunshine,  glowing  colors  and  soft  shadows. 
We  are  traversing  one  of  the  most  charming  and 
romantic  districts  that  even  Scotland  can  present. 
Here  'every  field  has  its  battle,  every  rivulet  its 
song.'  More  than  a  century  hence,  this  historic 
neighborhood  is  destined  to  furnish  the  home,  and 
fire  the  fancy,  of  Sir  Walter  Scott;  and  here,  be- 
neath the  vaulted  aisle  of  Dryburgh's  ancient  abbey, 
he  will  find  his  last  resting-place.  But  that  time 
is  not  yet.  Even  now,  however,  in  1690,  the  hoary 
cloister  is  only  a  battered  and  weatherbeaten  frag- 
ment. It  is  almost  covered  by  the  branches  of  the 
trees  that,  planted  right  against  the  walls,  have 
spread  their  limbs  like  creepers  over  the  mossy  ruins, 
as  though  endeavoring  to  protect  the  venerable  pile. 
And  here,  sitting  on  a  huge  slab  that  has  fallen  from 

57 


58  A  Handful  of  Stars 

the  broken  arch  above,  is  a  small  boy  of  ten.  His 
name  is  Ebenezer  Erskine;  he  is  the  son  of  the 
minister  of  Chirnside.  Like  his  father,  he  was 
born  here  at  Dryburgh;  and  to-day  the  two  are 
revisiting  the  neighborhood  round  which  so  many 
memories  cluster.  This  morning  the  father,  the 
Rev.  Henry  Erskine,  has  been  catechizing  a  group 
of  children  at  the  kirk.  He  selected  the  questions 
in  the  Shorter  Catechism  that  relate  to  the  Ten 
Commandments;  and  the  very  first  of  the  answers 
that  his  father  then  taught  him  has  made  a  pro- 
found impression  on  Ebenezer' s  mind.  The  forty- 
third  question  runs:  'What  is  the  preface  to  the 
Ten  Commandments f  And  the  answer  is:  'The 
preface  to  the  Ten  Commandments  is  in  these  words: 
"I  am  the  Lord  thy  God  which  have  brought  thee 
out  of  the  Land  of  Egypt,  out  of  the  house  of 
bondage."  '  Other  questions  follow,  and  they,  with 
their  attendant  answers,  have  been  duly  memorized. 
But  they  have  failed  to  hold  his  thought.  This  one, 
however,  refuses  to  be  shaken  off.  He  has,  quite 
involuntarily,  repeated  it  to  himself  a  hundred  times 
as  he  pushed  his  way  through  the  heather  to  the 
mossy  abbey.  It  sounds  in  his  ears  like  a  claim,  a 
challenge,  an  insistent  and  imperative  demand. 

1  am  the  Lord! 

I  am  thy  God! 

The  Lord!   Thy  God! 

It  is  his  first  realization  of  the  fact  that  he  is  not 
altogether  his  own. 


Ebenezer  Erskine's  Test  59 

II 

Eighteen  years  have  passed.  He  is  now  the  min- 
ister of  the  Portmoak  parish.  But  it  is  a  poor  busi- 
ness. *I  began  my  ministry,'  he  says,  'without  much 
zeal,  callously  and  mechanically,  being  swallowed  up 
in  unbelief  and  in  rebellion  against  God.'  He  feels 
no  enthusiasm  for  the  Bible ;  indeed,  the  New  Testa- 
ment positively  wearies  him.  His  sermons  are  long 
and  formal;  he  learns  them  by  heart  and  repeats 
them  parrot-fashion,  taking  care  to  look,  not  into 
the  faces  of  his  people,  but  at  a  certain  nail  in  the 
opposite  wall.  Happily  for  himself  and  for  the 
world,  he  has  by  this  time  married  a  wife  to  whom 
the  truth  is  no  stranger.  For  years,  poor  Mrs. 
Erskine  has  wept  in  secret  over  her  husband's  un- 
regenerate  heart  and  unspiritual  ministry.  But  now 
a  terrible  sickness  lays  her  low.  Her  brain  is 
fevered;  she  raves  in  her  delirium;  her  words  are 
wild  and  passionate.  Yet  they  are  words  that 
smite  her  husband's  conscience  and  pierce  his  very 
soul.  'At  last,'  so  runs  the  diary,  'the  Lord  was 
pleased  to  calm  her  spirit  and  give  her  a  sweet  se- 
renity of  mind.  This,  I  think,  was  the  first  time  that 
ever  I  felt  the  Lord  touching  my  heart  in  a  sensible 
manner.  Her  distress  and  her  deliverance  were 
blessed  to  me.  Some  few  weeks  after,  she  and  I 
were  sitting  together  in  my  study,  and  while  we 
were  conversing  about  the  things  of  God,  the  Lord 
was  pleased  to  rend  the  veil  and  to  give  me  a  glim- 


6o  A  Handful  of  Stars 

mering  view  of  salvation  which  made  my  soul 
acquiesce  in  Christ  as  the  new  and  living  way  to 
glory.'     The  old  text  comes  back  to  him. 

'I  am  the  Lord  thy  God!' 

'I  am  the  Lord  thy  God!' 

Once  more  it  sounds  like  a  claim.  And  this  time 
he  yields.  He  makes  his  vow  in  writing.  'I  offer 
myself  up,  soul  and  body,  unto  God  the  Father,  Son 
and  Holy  Ghost.  I  flee  for  shelter  to  the  blood  of 
Jesus.  I  will  live  to  Him;  I  will  die  to  Him.  I  take 
heaven  and  earth  to  witness  that  all  I  am  and  all  I 
have  are  His.' 

Thus,  on  August  26,  1708,  Ebenezer  Erskine 
makes  his  covenant.  'That  night,'  he  used  to  say, 
*I  got  my  head  out  of  Time  into  Eternity!' 

Ill 

Ten  more  years  have  passed.  It  is  now  1718; 
Ebenezer  Erskine  is  thirty-eight.  Filled  with  con- 
cern for  the  souls  of  his  people  at  Portmoak,  he 
preaches  a  sermon  on  the  text  that  had  played  so 
great  a  part  in  bringing  his  own  spirit  out  of 
bondage. 

'I  am  the  Lord  thy  God!' 

7  am  the  Lord  thy  God!' 

As  he  preaches,  the  memory  of  his  own  ex- 
perience rushes  back  upon  him.  His  soul  catches 
fire.  He  is  one  moment  persuasive  and  the  next 
peremptory.      No   sermon  that   he   ever   preached 


Ebenezer  Srskine's  Text  6i 

made  a  greater  impression  on  his  congregation ;  and, 
when  it  was  printed,  it  proved  to  be  the  most  ef- 
fective and  fruitful  of  all  his  publications. 

IV 

Five  and  thirty  further  years  have  run  their 
course.  Mr.  Erskine  is  now  seventy-three.  He  has 
passed  through  the  fires  of  persecution,  and,  in  days 
of  tumult  and  unrest,  has  proved  himself  a  leader 
whom  the  people  have  delighted,  at  any  cost,  to 
follow.  But  his  physical  frame  is  exhausted.  An 
illness  overtakes  him  which,  continuing  for  over  a 
year,  at  last  proves  fatal.  His  elders  drop  in  from 
time  to  time  to  read  and  pray  with  him.  To-day 
one  of  them,  the  senior  member  of  the  little  band, 
is  moved,  in  taking  farewell  of  his  dying  minister, 
to  ask  a  question  of  him.  After  grasping  the  sick 
man's  hand  and  moving  towards  the  door,  a  sudden 
impulse  seizes  him  and  he  returns  to  the  bedside. 

'You  have  often  given  us  good  advice,  Mr. 
Erskine,'  he  says,  'as  to  what  we  should  do  with 
our  souls  in  life  and  in  death;  may  I  ask  what  you 
are  now  doing  with  your  own?' 

'I  am  just  doing  with  it,'  the  old  man  replies, 
*what  I  did  forty  years  ago ;  I  am  resting  it  on  that 
word,  "I  am  the  Lord  thy  God!" ' 

V 

Now    what   was    it,  I    wonder,    that    Ebenezer 


62  A  Handful  of  Stars 

Erskine  saw  in  this  string  of  monosyllables  as  he 
sat  on  the  fallen  slab  beside  the  ruined  abbey  in 
1690,  as  he  sat  conversing  with  his  convalescent 
wife  in  1708,  as  he  preached  with  such  passion  in 
17 18,  and  as  he  lay  dying  in  1753?  What,  to  him, 
was  the  significance  of  that  great  sentence  that,  as 
the  catechism  says,  forms  *the  preface  to  the  Ten 
Commandments'  ?  Ebenezer  Erskine  saw,  under- 
lying the  words,  two  tremendous  principles.  They 
convinced  him  that  the  Center  must  always  he 
greater  than  the  Circumference  and  they  convinced 
him  that  the  Positive  must  always  he  greater  than 
the  Negative. 

The  Center  mu^t  always  be  greater  than  the  Cir- 
cumference, for,  without  the  center,  there  can  be 
no  circumference.  And  there,  in  the  very  first 
word  of  this  'preface  to  the  Ten  Commandments,' 
stands  the  august  center  around  which  all  the  man- 
dates revolve.  7  am  the  Lord  thy  God.'  'I  have 
many  times  essayed,'  Luther  tells  us  in  his  Table- 
Talk,  'thoroughly  to  investigate  the  Ten  Command- 
ments; but  at  the  very  outset — "/  am  the  Lord  thy 
God'' — I  stuck  fast.  That  single  word  "I"  put  me 
to  a  non-plus.'  I  am  not  surprised.  The  man  who 
would  enter  this  Palace  of  Ten  Chambers  will  find 
God  awaiting  him  on  the  threshold;  and  he  must 
make  up  his  mind  as  to  his  relationship  with  Him 
before  he  can  pass  on  to  investigate  the  interior  of 
the  edifice.  In  learning  his  Shorter  Catechism  that 
Sunday  morning  at  Dryburgh,  Ebenezer  Erskine, 


Ebenezer  Erskine's  Text  63 

then  a  boy  of  ten,  had  come  face  to  face  with  God; 
and  he  felt  that  he  dared  not  proceed  to  the  Cir- 
ciimference  until  his  heart  was  in  harmony  with 
the  Center. 

VI 

He  felt,  too,  that  the  Positive  must  precede  the 
Negative.  The  person  of  the  most  High  must  come 
before  the  precepts  of  the  Most  High;  the  Thou 
Shahs  must  come  before  the  Thou  Shalt  Nots.  The 
superstructure  of  a  personal  religion  cannot  be 
reared  on  a  foundation  of  negatives.  Life  can  only 
be  constructed  positively.  The  soul  cannot  flourish 
on  a  principle  of  subtraction;  it  can  only  prosper 
on  a  principle  of  addition.  It  is  at  this  point  that  we 
perpetrate  one  of  our  commonest  blunders.  Be- 
tween Christmas  Day  and  New  Year's  Day,  we 
invariably  frame  a  variety  of  good  resolutions;  we 
register  a  number  of  excellent  resolves.  But,  for  the 
most  part,  they  come  to  nothing;  and  they  come  to 
nothing  because  they  are  so  largely  negative.  *I 
will  never  again  do  such-and-such  a  thing';  T  will 
never  again  behave  in  such-and-such  a  way' ;  and 
so  on.  We  have  failed  to  discover  the  truth  that 
gripped  the  soul  of  Ebenezer  Erskine  that  day  at 
Dryburgh.  He  saw,  as  he  repeated  to  himself  his 
catechism,  that  the  Ten  Commandments  consist  of 
three  parts. 

(i)   The  Preface — 7  am  the  Lord  thy  God!' 
(2)  The  Precepts — 'Thou  shalt  .  .  .' 


64  A  Handful  of  Stars 

(3)  The  Prohibitions — 'Thou  shalt  not  .  .  / 
Our  New  Year's  resolutions  assume  that  we 
should  put  third  things  first.  We  are  wrong.  As 
Ebenezer  Erskine  saw,  we  must  put  the  Person  be- 
fore the  Precepts,  and  the  Precepts  before  the  Pro- 
hibitions. The  Center  must  come  before  the  Cir- 
cumference; the  Positive  before  the  Negative. 

When,  at  the  end  of  December,  we  pledge  our- 
selves so  desperately  to  do  certain  things  no  more, 
we  entirely  forget  that  our  worst  offenses  do  not 
consist  in  outraging  the  Thou  Shalt  Nots;  our  worst 
offenses  consist  in  violating  the  Thou  Shalts.  The 
revolt  of  the  soul  against  the  divine  Prohibitions 
is  as  nothing  compared  with  the  revolt  of  the  soul 
against  the  divine  Precepts;  just  as  the  revolt  of 
the  soul  against  the  divine  Precepts  is  as  nothing 
compared  with  the  revolt  of  the  soul  against  the 
Divine  Person.  It  is  by  a  flash  of  real  spiritual 
insight  that,  in  the  General  Confession  in  the  Church 
of  England  Prayer  Book,  the  clause,  'IVe  have  left 
undone  those  things  which  we  ought  to  have  done,' 
precedes  the  clause,  'And  we  have  done  those  things 
which  we  ought  not  to  have  done.'  In  his  Ecce 
Homo,  Sir  John  Seeley  has  pointed  out  the  radical 
difference  between  the  villains  of  the  parables  and 
the  villains  that  figure  in  all  other  literature.  In  the 
typical  novel  the  villain  is  a  man  who  does  what  he 
ought  not  to  do ;  in  the  tales  that  Jesus  told  the  vil- 
lain is  a  man  who  leaves  undone  what  he  ought  to 
have  done.     'The  sinner  whom  Christ  denounces,' 


Ebenezer  Erskine's  Text  65 

says  Sir  John,  *is  he  who  has  done  nothing;  the 
priest  and  the  Levite  who  passed  by  on  the  other 
side;  the  rich  man  who  allowed  the  beggar  to  lie 
unhelped  at  his  gate;  the  servant  who  hid  in  a  nap- 
kin the  talent  intrusted  to  him;  the  unprofitable 
hireling  who  did  only  what  it  was  his  duty  to  do,' 
Christ's  villains  are  the  men  who  sin  against  the 
Person  and  the  Precepts  of  the  Most  High;  he 
scarcely  notices  the  men  who  violate  the  Prohibi- 
tions. Yet  it  is  of  the  Prohibitions  that,  when  New 
Years  come,  we  think  so  much. 

'  At  vesper-tide, 

One  virtuous  and  pure  in  heart  did  pray, 
'Since  none  I  wronged  in  deed  or  word  to-day, 
From  whom  should  I  crave  pardon?    Master,  say.' 

A  voice  replied : 
'From  the  sad  child  whose  joy  thou  hast  not  planned; 
The  goaded  beast  whose  friend  thou  didst  not  stand; 
The  rose  that  died  for  water  from  thy  hand.' 

During  a  ministry  of  nearly  thirty  years,  it  has 
been  my  privilege  and  duty  to  deal  with  men  and 
women  of  all  kinds  and  conditions.  I  have  at- 
tended hundreds  of  deathbeds.  In  reviewing  those 
experiences  to-day,  I  cannot  remember  a  single  case 
of  a  man  who  found  it  difficult  to  believe  that  God 
could  forgive  those  things  that  he  ought  not  to 
have  done  and  had  done ;  and  I  cannot  recall  a  single 
case  of  a  man  who  found  it  easy  to  believe  that  God 
could  forgive  those  things  that  he  ought  to  have 


66  A  Handful  of  Stars 

done  but  had  left  undone.  It  is  our  sins  against 
the  divine  Precepts  that  sting  most  venomously  at 
the  last : 

'The  sad,  sad  child  whose  joy  thou  hast  not  planned; 
The  goaded  beast  whose  friend  thou  didst  not  stand; 
The  rose  that  died  for  water  from  thy  hand !' 

Ebenezer  Erskine  saw  that  day  at  Dryburgh  that 
he  must  recognize  the  inspired  order.  He  must 
bow  first  of  all  to  the  authority  of  the  Divine  Per- 
son; he  must  recognize  the  obligations  involved  in 
the  Divine  Precepts;  and,  after  this,  he  must  eschew 
those  things  that  are  forbidden  by  the  Divine  Pro- 
hibitions.   That  order  he  never  forgot. 


VII 

George  Macdonald  tells  us  how,  when  the  Mar- 
quis of  Lossie  was  dying,  he  sent  post-haste  for  Mr. 
Graham,  the  devout  schoolmaster.  Mr.  Graham 
knew  his  man  and  went  cautiously  to  work. 

'Are  you  satisfied  with  yourself  my  lord?' 

*No,  by  God!' 

'You  would  like  to  be  better?' 

'Yes;  but  how  is  a  poor  devil  to  get  out  of  this 
infernal  scrape?' 

'Keep  the  commandments!' 

'That's  it,  of  course;  but  there's  no  time!' 

'If  there  were  but  time  to  draw  another  breath, 
there  would  be  time  to  begin!' 


Ebenezer  Erskine's  Text  67 

'How  am  I  to  begin?  Which  am  I  to  begin 
with?' 

'There  is  one  commandment  which  includes  all 
the  rest!' 

'Which  is  that?' 

'Believe  on  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  thou  shall 
he  saved!' 

What  did  the  schoolmaster  mean?  He  meant 
that  the  Person  must  precede  the  Precepts,  as  the 
Precepts  must  precede  the  Prohibitions ;  he  was  in- 
sisting on  the  divine  order;  that  was  all.  And  I 
feel  confident  that  that  was  the  burden  of  that 
powerful  sermon  that  Ebenezer  Erskine  preached 
to  his  people  at  Portmoak  in  1718.  His  last  illness, 
as  I  have  said,  continued  for  twelve  months.  It 
was  in  its  earlier  stages  that  the  old  elder  asked 
his  question  and  received  his  minister's  testimony 
concerning  the  text.  A  year  later  Mr.  Erskine  re- 
ferred to  the  words  again.  On  the  morning  of  the 
first  of  June,  he  awoke  from  a  brief  sleep,  and,  see- 
ing his  daughter,  Mrs.  Fisher,  sitting  reading  by 
his  bedside,  he  asked  her  the  name  of  the  book. 

'I  am  reading  one  of  your  own  sermons,  father !' 

'Which  one?' 

'The  one  on  "/  am  the  Lord  thy  God!"  ' 

*Ah,  lass,'  he  exclaimed,  his  face  lighting  up,  as 
a  wave  of  sacred  memories  swept  over  him,  'that 
is  the  best  sermon  ever  I  preached !' 

A  few  minutes  later  he  closed  his  eyes,  slipped 
his  hand  under  his  cheek,  composed  himself  on  his 


68  A  Handful  of  Stars 

pillow,  and  ceased  to  breathe.  The  noble  spirit  of 
Ebenezer  Erskine  was  with  God. 

Ebenezer  Erskine  reminds  me  of  his  great  pre- 
decessor, Samuel  Rutherford.  When  Rutherford 
was  staying  for  a  while  at  the  house  of  James 
Guthrie,  the  maid  was  surprised  at  hearing  a  voice 
in  his  room.  She  had  supposed  he  was  alone. 
Moved  by  curiosity,  she  crept  to  his  door.  She  then 
discovered  that  Rutherford  was  in  prayer.  He 
walked  up  and  down  the  room,  exclaiming,  '0  Lord, 
make  me  to  believe  in  Thee!'  Then,  after  a  pause, 
he  moved  to  and  fro  again,  crying,  'O  Lord,  make 
me  to  love  Thee!'  And,  after  a  second  rest,  he 
rose  again,  praying,  '0  Lord,  make  me  to  keep  all 
Thy  commandments !'  Rutherford,  like  Erskine  a 
generation  later,  had  grasped  the  spiritual  signifi- 
cance of  the  divine  order. 

'Make  me  to  believe  in  Thee!' — the  command- 
ment that,  as  the  schoolmaster  told  the  Marquis, 
includes  all  the  commandments ! 

'Make  me  to  love  Thee!' — for  love,  as  Jesus  told 
the  rich  young  ruler,  is  the  fulfilment  of  the  whole 
law. 

'Make  me  to  obey  all  Thy  commandments!' 

The  man  who  learns  the  Ten  Commandments  at 
the  school  of  Samuel  Rutherford  or  at  the  school  of 
Ebenezer  Erskine  will  see  a  shining  path  that  runs 
from  Mount  Sinai  right  up  to  the  Cross  and  on 
through  the  gates  of  pearl  into  the  City  of  God. 


VI 
DOCTOR  DAVIDSON'S  TEXT 


There  are  only  two  things  worth  mentioning 
in  connection  with  Dr.  Davidson,  but  they  are  both 
of  them  very  beautiful.  The  one  was  his  life:  the 
other  was  his  death.  Ian  Maclaren  tells  us  that  the 
old  doctor  had  spent  practically  all  his  days  as  min- 
ister at  Drumtochty.  He  was  the  father  of  all  the 
folk  in  the  glen.  He  was  consulted  about  every- 
thing. Three  generations  of  young  people  had,  in 
turn,  confided  to  his  sympathetic  ear  the  story  of 
their  loves  and  hopes  and  fears;  rich  and  poor  had 
alike  found  in  him  a  guide  in  the  day  of  perplexity 
and  a  comforter  in  the  hour  of  sorrow.  And  now 
it  is  Christmas  Day — the  doctor's  last  Christmas — 
and  a  Sunday.  The  doctor  had  preached  as  usual 
in  the  kirk ;  had  trudged  through  the  snow  to  greet 
with  seasonable  wishes  and  gifts  one  or  two  people 
who  might  be  feeling  lonely  or  desolate;  and  now, 
the  day's  work  done,  was  entertaining  Drumsheugh 
at  the  manse.  All  at  once,  he  began  to  speak  of  his 
ministry,  lamenting  that  he  had  not  done  better 
for  his  people,  and  declaring  that,  if  he  were  spared, 

69 


70  A  Handful  of  Stars 

he  intended  to  preach  more  frequently  about  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ. 

'You  and  I,  Drumsheugh,  will  have  to  go  a  long 
journey  soon,  and  give  an  account  of  our  lives  in 
Drumtochty.  Perhaps  we  have  done  our  best  as 
men  can,  and  I  think  we  have  tried;  but  there  are 
many  things  we  might  have  done  otherwise,  and 
some  we  ought  not  to  have  done  at  all.  It  seems 
to  me  now,  the  less  we  say  in  that  day  of  the  past, 
the  better.  We  shall  wish  for  mercy  rather  than 
justice,  and' — here  the  doctor  looked  earnestly  over 
his  glasses  at  his  elder — 'we  would  be  none  the 
worse,  Drumsheugh,  of  a  Friend  to  say  a  good  word 
for  us  both  in  the  Great  Court !' 

*A've  thocht  that  masel' — it  was  an  agony  for 
Drumsheugh  to  speak — 'a've  thocht  that  masel  mair 
than  aince.  Weelum  MacLure  was  ettlin'  aifter  the 
same  thing  the  r'^ht  he  slippit  awa,  and  gin  ony 
man  cud  hae  stude  on  his  ain  feet  yonder,  it  was 
Weelum.' 

It  was  the  doctor's  last  conversation.  When  his 
old  servant  entered  the  room  next  morning,  he 
found  his  master  sitting  silent  and  cold  in  his  chair. 

'We  need  a  Friend  in  the  Great  Court!'  said  the 
doctor. 

'A've  thocht  that  masel!'  replied  Drumsheugh, 

'Weelum  MacLure  was  ettlin'  after  the  same 
thing  the  nicht  he  slippit  awa!' 

'For  there  is  one  God,  and  one  Mediator  between 
God  and  men,  the  Man  Christ  Jesus.' 


Doctor  Davidson's  Text  71 


II 


My  Bible  contains  two  stories — one  near  its  be- 
ginning and  one  near  its  end — which  to-day  I  must 
lay  side  by  side.  The  first  is  the  story  of  a  man 
who  feels  that  he  is  suffering  more  than  his  share 
of  the  slings  and  arrows  of  outrageous  fortune. 
He  thinks  of  God  as  very  high  and  very  holy ;  too 
wise  to  err  and  too  good  to  be  unkind ;  yet  he  can- 
not shake  from  his  mind  the  conviction  that  God 
has  misunderstood  him.  And,  in  his  agony,  he 
cries  out  for  one  who  can  arbitrate  between  his 
tortured  soul  and  the  God  who  seems  to  be  so 
angry  with  him.  Oh,  for  one  a  little  less  divine 
than  God,  yet  a  little  less  human  than  himself,  who 
could  act  as  an  adjudicator,  an  umpire,  a  mediator 
between  them!  But  neither  the  heavens  above  nor 
the  earth  beneath  can  produce  one  capable  of  ending 
the  painful  controversy.  'There  is  no  daysman  who 
can  come  between  us  and  lay  his  hand  upon  us 
both!' 

A  God! 

But  no  Mediator! 

That  is  the  first  story. 

The  second  story,  the  story  from  the  end  of  the 
Bible,  is  the  story  of  an  old  minister  whose  life- 
work  is  finished.  He  writes,  in  a  reminiscent  vein, 
to  a  young  minister  who  is  just  beginning;  and 
earnestly  refers  to  his  own  ordination.  'Where- 
unto,'  he  asks,  'was  I  ordained  a  preacher  and  an 


72  A  Handful  of  Stars 

apostle  and  a  teacher  of  the  Gentiles  in  faith  and 
verity?'  What  is  his  message?  He  answers  his 
own  question.  It  is  this.  'For  there  is  one  God, 
and  one  Mediator  between  God  and  men,  the  Man 
Christ  Jesus.' 

A  God! 

And  a  Mediator! 

Job  needed  a  Friend  in  the  Great  Court;  but, 
alas,  he  could  not  find  one! 

Paul  tells  Timothy  that  he  was  ordained  for  no 
other  purpose  than  to  point  men  to  Him  who  alone 
can  intercede. 

Ill 

'One  God — hut  no  Mediator!'  cries  Job. 

'One  God — and  one  Mediator!'  exclaims  Paul. 

In  one  respect  these  two  thinkers,  standing  with 
a  long,  long  file  of  centuries  between  them,  are  in 
perfect  agreement.  They  both  feel  that  if  there  is 
a  God — and  only  one — no  man  living  can  afford  to 
drift  into  alienation  from  Him.  If  there  is  no  God, 
I  can  live  as  I  list  and  do  as  I  please ;  I  am  answer- 
able to  nobody.  If  there  are  many  gods,  I  can  of- 
fend one  or  two  of  them  without  involving  myself 
in  uttermost  disaster  and  despair.  But  if  there  is 
one  God,  and  only  one,  everything  depends  upon 
my  relationship  with  Him.  And  if  I  am  already 
estranged  from  Him,  and  if  there  be  no  Mediator 
by  whose  good  offices  a  reconciliation  may  be  ef- 
fected, then  am  I  of  all  men  most  miserable. 


Doctor  Davidson's  Text  73 

'One  God — but  no  Mediator!'  cried  Job  in 
despair. 

'One  God — and  one  Mediator!'  exclaims  Paul, 
in  delight. 

IV 

'One  God — and  one  Mediator!' 

It  is  the  glory  of  our  humanity  that  it  needs  both 
the  one  and  the  other.  We  need  a  God  and  cannot 
be  happy  till  we  find  Him.  The  instinct  of  adora- 
tion is  in  our  blood,  and  we  are  ill  at  ease  until  we 
can  find  One  at  whose  feet  we  can  lay  the  tribute 
of  our  devotion.  We  need  a  Mediator,  too,  and  are 
at  our  best  when  we  recognize  and  confess  our 
need  of  Him.  It  is,  I  say,  the  glory  of  a  man  that 
he  can  yearn  for  these  two  things.  The  most 
faithful  and  intelligent  of  the  beasts  feel  no  desire 
for  either  the  one  or  the  other.  We  know  how  Dr. 
Davidson  died.  I  said  that  his  conversation  with 
Drumsheugh  was  his  last.  I  was  mistaken.  His 
last  conversation  was  with  Skye,  his  dog.  When 
John,  the  serving-man,  paid  his  usual  visit  to  the 
study  before  he  went  to  bed,  the  doctor  did  not  hear 
him  enter  the  room.  He  was  holding  converse  with 
Skye,  who  was  seated  on  a  chair,  looking  very  wise 
and  deeply  interested. 

'Ye're  a  bonnie  beastie,  Skye,'  exclaimed  the  doc- 
tor, 'for  a'  thing  He  made  is  verra  gude.  Ye've 
been  true  and  kind  to  your  master,  Skye,  and  ye  'ill 
miss  him  if  he  leaves  ye.     Some  day  ye  'ill  die 


74  A  Handful  of  Stars 

also,  and  they  'ill  bury  ye,  and  I  doubt  that  'ill  be 
the  end  o'  ye,  Skye !  Ye  never  heard  o'  God,  Skye, 
or  the  Saviour,  for  ye' re  just  a  puir  doggie;  but 
your  master  is  minister  of  Drumtochty  and — a  sin- 
ner saved  by  grace!' 

Those  were  his  last  words.  In  the  morning  the 
doctor  was  still  sitting  in  his  big  chair,  and  Skye 
was  fondly  licking  a  hand  that  would  never  again 
caress  him. 

Skye,  the  noblest  dog  in  the  world,  had  no  sense 
of  sin  and  no  sense  of  grace,  no  need  of  a  God  and 
no  need  of  a  Saviour! 

Dr.  Davidson,  Skye's  master,  is  a  sinner  saved 
by  grace.  And  it  is  his  sense  of  sin  and  his  sense 
of  grace,  his  need  of  a  God  and  his  need  of  a 
Saviour,  that  remove  him  by  whole  infinities  from 
the  faithful  brute  on  the  chair.  *A  sinner,'  as  our 
fathers  used  to  sing: 

A  sinner  is  a  sacred  thing, 

The  Holy  Ghost  hath  made  him  so. 

When  the  soul  feels  after  God,  and  the  heart  cries 
out  for  a  Saviour,  it  is  proof  positive  of  the  di- 
vinity that  dwells  within  us. 

V 

'One  God — but  no  Mediator!'  sighs  Job. 
'One  God — and  one  Mediator!'  cries  Paul. 
None !    One !    The  difference  between  none  and 
one  is  a  difference  of  millions.  None  means  nothing, 


Doctor  Davidson's  Text  75 

one  means  everything.  None  means  failure:  one 
means  felicity.  None  means  despair :  one  means 
delight.  None  means  perdition :  one  means  paradise. 
The  difference  between  'no  Mediator'  and  'one  Me- 
diator' is  a  difference  that  can  never  be  worked  out 
by  arithmetic. 

'One  God' — and  only  one! 

'And  one  Mediator!' — only  one! 

But  one  is  enough.  It  is  only  in  the  small  things 
of  life  that  I  long  for  a  selection;  in  the  great 
things  of  life  I  only  long  for  satisfaction.  When  my 
appetite  is  sated,  and  food  is  almost  a  matter  of 
indifference  to  me,  I  like  to  be  invited  to  choose 
between  this,  that,  and  the  other.  But  when  I  am 
starving,  I  do  not  hanker  after  a  choice.  I  do  not 
want  to  choose.  Put  food  before  me,  and  I  am  con- 
tent. If  I  am  taking  a  stroll  for  the  mere  pleasure 
of  walking,  I  like  to  come  to  a  place  where  several 
roads  meet,  and  to  select  the  path  that  seems  to  be 
most  tempting.  But  if,  weary  and  travelworn,  I 
am  struggling  desperately  homewards,  I  do  not  want 
to  have  to  choose  my  path.  I  dread  the  place  where 
many  roads  meet — the  place  where  I  may  go  astray. 
My  felicity  lies  in  simplicity:  I  want  but  one  road 
if  that  road  leads  home.  Robinson  Crusoe  climbs 
the  hills  of  his  island  solitude  and  shades  his  eyes 
with  his  hand  as  he  sweeps  the  watery  horizon.  He 
is  looking  for  a  sail.  One  ship  will  do :  he  does  not 
want  a  fleet.  There  is  but  one  way  of  salvation  for 
my  storm-tossed  soul :  there  is  but  one  Name  given 


76  A  Handful  of  Stars 

under  heaven  among  men  whereby  we  must  be 
saved :  'there  is  one  God  and  one  Mediator  between 
God  and  Men' — and  one  is  ample.  The  difference 
between  'no  Mediator^  and  'one  Mediator'  is  a  dif- 
ference that  has  all  eternity  within  it. 

VI 

But  it  is  time  that  we  came  to  close  quarters. 
There  are  two  people  in  every  congregation  with 
whom  the  minister  finds  it  very  difficult  to  deal. 
There  is  the  man  upon  whose  conscience  sin  lies 
very  heavily,  and  there  is  the  man  upon  whose  soul 
it  sits  very  lightly. 

The  first  of  these  two  perplexing  individuals  is 
afraid  to  approach  the  Mediator.  He  feels  it  to 
be  a  kind  of  presumption.  It  is  difficult  to  argue 
with  him.  It  is  better  to  introduce  him  to  Robert 
Murray  McCheyne.  McCheyne  had  the  same  feel- 
ing. 'I  am  ashamed  to  go  to  Christ,'  he  says.  T 
feel,  when  I  have  sinned,  that  it  would  do  no  good 
to  go.  It  seems  to  be  making  Christ  a  Minister  of 
Sin  to  go  straight  from  the  swine-trough  to  the 
best  robe.'  But  he  came  to  see  that  there  is  no 
other  way,  and  that  all  his  plausible  reasonings  were 
but  the  folly  of  his  own  beclouded  heart.  'The 
weight  of  my  sin,'  he  writes,  'should  act  like  the 
weight  of  a  clock;  the  heavier  it  is,  the  faster  it 
makes  it  go !' 

And  the  second  of  these  difficult  cases — the  man 


Doctor  Davidson's  Text  77 

upon  whose  conscience  sin  sits  so  lightly — I  shall 
introduce  to  Dr.  MacLure.  As  Drumsheugh  told 
Dr.  Davidson  on  that  snowy  Christmas  night,  *i£ 
ever  there  was  a  man  who  could  have  stood  on  his 
own  feet  in  the  Day  of  Judgment,  it  was  William 
MacLure.'  Through  all  his  long  years  in  the  glen, 
the  old  doctor  had  simply  lived  for  others.  As 
long  as  he  could  cure  his  patients  he  was  content; 
and  he  was  never  happier  than  in  handing  the  sick 
child  back  to  its  parents  or  in  restoring  the  wife 
to  the  husband  who  had  despaired  of  her  recovery. 
If  ever  there  was  a  man  who  could  have  stood  on 
his  own  feet  in  the  Day  of  Judgment,  it  was  Wil- 
liam MacLure.  Yet  when  the  old  doctor  came  to 
the  end  of  his  long  journey,  his  soul  was  feeling 
after  the  same  thing — a  Friend  in  the  Great  Court, 
an  Intercessor,  a  Mediator  between  God  and  men! 

*We  have  done  our  best,'  said  the  old  minister, 
in  that  last  talk  with  his  elder,  'we  have  done  our 
best,  but  the  less  we  say  about  it  the  better.  We 
need  a  Friend  to  say  a  good  word  for  us  in  the 
Great  Court.' 

'A've  thocht  that  masel,'  replied  the  agonized 
elder,  *mair  than  aince.  Weelum  MacLure  was 
'ettling  aifter  the  same  thing  the  nicht  he  slippit 
awa,  an'  gin  ony  man  cud  hae  stude  on  his  ain  feet 
yonder,  it  was  Weelum.' 

And  for  minister  and  elder  and  doctor — and  me 
— 'there  is  one  God  and  one  Mediator  between  God 
and  men,  the  man  Christ  Jesus.' 


VII 
HENRY  MARTYN'S  TEXT 


With  Henry  Martyn  the  making  of  history  be- 
came a  habit,  a  habit  so  inveterate  that  not  even 
death  itself  could  break  him  of  it.  He  only  hved 
to  be  thirty-two;  but  he  made  vast  quantities  of 
history  in  that  meager  handful  of  years.  'His,' 
says  Sir  James  Stephen,  'is  the  one  heroic  name 
which  adorns  the  annals  of  the  English  church  from 
the  days  of  Elizabeth  to  our  own.'  And  Dr.  George 
Smith,  his  biographer,  boasts  that  Martyn's  life  con- 
stitutes itself  the  priceless  and  perpetual  heritage  of 
all  English-speaking  Christendom,  whilst  the  na- 
tive churches  of  India,  Arabia,  Persia  and  Anatolia 
will  treasure  the  thought  of  it  through  all  time  to 
come.  Appropriately  enough,  Macaulay,  who  dedi- 
cated his  brilliant  powers  to  the  great  task  of 
worthily  recording  the  history  that  other  men  had 
made,  composed  the  epitaph  for  that  lonely  Eastern 
tomb. 

Here  Martyn  lies !    In  manhood's  early  bloom 
The  Christian  hero  found  a  Pagan  tomb: 
Religion,  sorrowing  o'er  her  favorite  son, 
Points  to  the  glorious  trophies  which  he  won. 

78 


Henry  Martyn's  Text  79 

Eternal  trophies,  not  with  slaughter  red, 

Not  stained  with  tears  by  hopeless  captives  shed; 

But  trophies  of  the  Cross.    For  that  dear  Name 

Through  every  form  of  danger,  death  and  shame. 

Onward  he  journeyed  to  a  happier  shore, 

Where  danger,  death  and  shame  are  known  no  more. 

For  more  than  a  hundred  years  the  bones  of 
Henry  Martyn  have  reposed  in  that  far-off  Orien- 
tal sepulcher;  but,  as  though  he  had  never  heard  of 
his  own  decease,  he  goes  on  making  history  still. 
Henry  Martyn  died  seven  years  before  George  Eliot 
v^as  born,  and  they  had  very  little  in  common. 
But,  in  the  novel  which  Dr.  Marcus  Dods  described 
as  *one  of  the  greatest  religious  books  ever  written,' 
George  Eliot  makes  the  spiritual  crisis  in  the  experi- 
ence of  her  storm-beaten  and  distracted  heroine  to 
turn  on  the  perusal  of  the  Life  of  Henry  Martyn. 
When  Janet  Dempster,  clad  only  in  her  thin  night- 
dress, was  driven  at  dead  of  night  from  her  hus- 
band's home,  she  took  refuge  with  good  old  Mrs. 
Petti fer,  and  fell  into  a  stupor  of  utter  misery  and 
black  despair.  Nothing  seemed  to  rouse  her.  It 
chanced,  however,  that  Mrs.  Petti  fer  was  a  sub- 
scriber of  the  Paddiford  Lending  Library.  From 
that  village  treasure-trove  she  had  borrowed  the 
biography  that  was  lying  on  the  table  when,  like  a 
hunted  deer,  poor  Janet  took  shelter  in  her  home. 
After  a  day  or  two,  Janet  picked  up  the  book,  dipped 
into  it,  and  at  length  'became  so  arrested  by  that 
pathetic  missionary  story  that  she  could  not  leave 
it  alone.'     It  broke  the  spell  of  her  stupor,  gave 


8o  A  Handful  of  Stars 

her  a  new  hold  upon  life,  awoke  her  dormant  en- 
ergy, and  moved  her  to  renewed  action. 

'I  must  go,'  she  said.  *I  feel  I  must  be  doing 
something  for  someone ;  I  must  not  be  a  mere  use- 
less log  any  longer.  'I've  been  reading  about  that 
wonderful  Henry  Martyn  wearing  himself  out  for 
other  people,  and  I  sit  thinking  of  nothing  but 
myself!    I  must  go !    Good-bye !' 

And,  like  a  frightened  dove  that,  having  been 
driven  to  shelter  by  a  hawk,  recovers  from  its 
terror  and  again  takes  wing,  off  she  went!  Janet 
Dempster  is  all  the  more  real  because  she  is  unreal. 
She  is  all  the  more  a  substance  because  she  is  only 
a  shadow.  She  is  all  the  more  symbolic  and  typical 
because  she  appears,  not  in  history,  but  in  fiction. 
If  I  had  found  her  in  the  realm  of  biography,  I 
might  have  regarded  hers  as  an  isolated  and  ex- 
ceptional case.  But,  since  I  have  found  her  in  the 
realm  of  romance,  I  can  only  regard  her — as  her 
creator  intended  me  to  regard  her — as  a  great  repre- 
sentative character.  She  represents  all  those  thou- 
sands of  people  upon  whom  the  heroic  record  of 
Henry  Martyn's  brief  career  has  acted  as  a  stimu- 
lant and  a  tonic.  She  represents  all  those  thousands 
of  people  through  whom  Henry  Martyn  is  making 
history. 

II 

The  Gospels  tell  of  a  certain  man  who  was  home 
of  four  to  the  feet  of  Jesus.    I  know  his  name  and 


Henry  Martyn's  Text  &i 

I  know  the  names  of  the  four  who  brought  him. 
The  man's  name  was  Henry  Martyn,  and  the  quar- 
tet consisted  of  a  father,  a  sister,  an  author  and 
a  minister.  Each  had  a  hand  in  the  gracious  work, 
and  each  in  a  different  way.  The  father  did  his 
part  accidentally,  indirectly,  unconsciously;  the  sis- 
ter did  her  part  designedly,  deliberately,  and  of  set 
purpose.  The  author  and  the  minister  did  their 
parts  in  the  ordinary  pursuit  of  their  vocations;  but 
the  author  did  his  part  impersonally  and  indirectly^ 
whilst  the  minister  did  his  part  personally  and  face 
to  face.  The  author's  shaft  was  from  a  bow  drawn 
at  a  venture;  the  minister's  was  carefully  aimed. 
He  set  himself  to  win  the  young  student  in  his  con- 
gregation, and  he  lived  to  rejoice  unfeignedly  in 
his  success.    Let  me  introduce  each  of  the  four. 

The  Father  bore  his  Corner.  Before  Henry  Mar- 
tyn left  England,  he  was  one  of  the  most  brilliant 
students  in  the  country,  Senior  Wrangler  of  his 
University,  and  the  proud  holder  of  scholarships 
and  fellowships.  But,  in  his  earlier  days,  he  failed 
at  one  or  two  examinations,  and,  in  his  mortification, 
heaped  the  blame  upon  his  father.  In  one  of  these 
fits  of  passion,  he  bounced  out  of  the  elder  man's 
presence — never  to  enter  it  again.  Before  he  could 
return  and  express  contrition,  the  father  suddenly 
died.  Henry's  remorse  was  pitiful  to  see.  His  heart 
was  filled  with  grief  and  his  eyes  swollen  with  tears. 
But  that  torrent  of  tears  so  cleansed  those  eyes  that 
he  was  able  to  see,  as  he  had  never  seen  before. 


^2  A  Handful  of  Stars 

into  the  abysmal  depths  of  his  own  heart.  He  wa? 
astonished  at  the  baseness  and  depravity  he  found 
there.  Years  afterwards  he  writes  with  emotion 
of  the  distressing  discovery  that  he  then  made.  'I 
do  not  remember  a  time/  he  says,  'in  which  the 
wickedness  of  my  heart  rose  to  a  greater  height 
than  it  did  then.  The  consummate  selfishness  and 
exquisite  instability  of  my  mind  were  displayed  in 
rage,  malice  and  envy ;  in  pride,  vain-glory  and  con- 
tempt for  all  about  me;  and  in  the  harsh  language 
which  I  used  to  my  sister  and  even  to  my  father. 
Oh,  what  an  example  of  patience  and  mildness  was 
he!  I  love  to  think  of  his  excellent  qualities;  and  it 
is  the  anguish  of  my  heart  that  I  could  ever  have 
been  base  enough  and  wicked  enough  to  have  pained 
him.  O  my  God,  why  is  not  my  heart  doubly-agon- 
ized at  the  remembrance  of  all  my  great  transgres- 
sions?' So  poor  John  Martyn,  lying  silent  in  his 
grave,  entered  into  that  felicity  which,  in  one  of  her 
short  poems.  Miss  Susan  Best  has  so  touchingly  de- 
picted. 'When  I  was  laid  in  my  coffin,'  she  makes 
a  dead  man  say, 

When  I  was  laid  in  my  coffin. 

Quite  done  with  Time  and  its  fears, 
My  son  came  and  stood  beside  me — 

He  hadn't  been  home  for  years; 
And  right  on  my  face  came  dripping 

The  scald  of  his  salty  tears; 
And  I  was  glad  to  know  his  breast 
Had  turned  at  last  to  the  old  home  nest, 
That  I  said  to  myself  in  an  underbreath: 
'This  is  the  recompense  of  death.' 


Henry  Martyn's  Text  8j 

The  Sister  bore  her  Corner.  In  his  letters  to  her 
he  opens  all  his  heart.  He  is  sometimes  angry  with 
her  because,  when  he  expected  her  to  show  delight 
in  his  academic  triumphs,  she  only  exhibits  an 
earnest  solicitude  for  his  spiritual  well-being.  But, 
in  his  better  moments,  he  forgave  her.  'What  a 
blessing  it  is  for  me,'  he  writes  to  her  in  his  twenti- 
eth year,  'what  a  blessing  it  is  for  me  that  I  have 
such  a  sister  as  you,  who  have  been  so  instrumental 
in  keeping  me  in  the  right  way.'  And,  later  on,  he 
delights  her  by  telling  her  that  he  'has  begun  to 
attend  more  diligently  to  the  words  of  the  Saviour 
and  to  devour  them  with  delight.' 

The  Author  bore  his  Corner.  It  was  just  about 
a  hundred  years  after  the  birth  of  Philip  Doddridge, 
and  just  about  fifty  years  after  his  death,  that  his 
book.  The  Rise  and  Progress  of  Religion  in  the  Soul, 
fell  into  the  hands  of  Henry  Martyn.  Twenty  years 
earlier  it  had  opened  the  eyes  of  William  Wilber- 
force  and  led  him  to  repentance,  Doddridge's 
powerful  sentences  fell  upon  the  proud  soul  of 
Henry  Martyn  like  the  lashes  of  a  scourge.  He  re- 
sented them;  he  writhed  under  their  condemnation; 
but  they  revealed  to  him  the  desperate  need  of  his 
heart,  and  he  could  not  shake  from  him  the  alarm 
which  they  excited. 

The  Minister  bore  his  Corner.  No  preacher  in 
England  was  better  fitted  to  appeal  to  the  mind  of 
Martyn,  at  this  critical  stage  of  his  career,  than 
was  the  Rev.  Charles  Simeon,  the  Vicar  of  Trinity 


!84  A  Handful  of  Stars 

Church,  Cambridge.  In  his  concern,  the  young 
collegian  found  himself  strangely  attracted  to  the 
services  at  Trinity;  and  he  gradually  acquired,  as 
he  confessed  to  his  sister,  more  knowledge  in  divine 
things.  He  made  the  acquaintance,  and  won  the 
friendship,  of  Mr.  Simeon,  and  confided  in  him 
without  reserve.  'I  now  experienced,'  he  says,  *a 
real  pleasure  in  religion,  being  more  deeply  con- 
vinced of  sin  than  before,  more  earnest  in  fleeing 
to  Jesus  for  refuge,  and  more  desirous  for  the  re- 
newal of  my  nature.'  The  profit  was  mutual.  For, 
many  years  after  Henry  Martyn's  departure  and 
death,  Mr.  Simeon  kept  in  his  study  a  portrait  of 
the  young  student,  and  he  used  to  say  that  he  could 
never  look  into  that  face  but  it  seemed  to  say  to  him, 
^Be  earnest!     Be  earnest!' 

And  so,  to  repeat  the  language  of  the  Gospel, 
^there  came  unto  Jesus  one  that  was  borne  of  four,' 
and  his  name  was  Henry  Martyn. 

HI 

I  cannot  discover  that,  up  to  this  point,  any  one 
text  had  played  a  conspicuous  part  in  precipitating 
the  crisis  which  transfigured  his  life.  But,  after  this, 
I  find  one  sentence  repeatedly  on  his  lips.  During 
a  journey  a  man  is  often  too  engrossed  with  the 
perplexities  of  the  immediate  present  to  be  able 
to  review  the  path  as  a  whole.  But,  when  he  looks 
back,  he  surveys  the  entire  landscape  in  grateful 


Henry  Martyn's  Test  85; 

retrospect,  and  is  astonished  at  the  multiplicity  and 
variety  of  the  perils  that  he  has  escaped.  Henry 
Martyn  had  some  such  feeling.  When,  at  the  age 
of  twenty-two,  he  entered  the  ministry,  he  was 
amazed  at  the  greatness  of  the  grace  that  had  made 
such  hallowed  privileges  and  sacred  duties  possible 
to  him.  Even  in  his  first  sermon,  we  are  told,  he 
preached  with  a  fervor  of  spirit  and  an  earnestness 
of  manner  that  deeply  impressed  the  congregation. 

He  preached  as  one  who  ne'er  should  preach  again, 
And  as  a  dying  man  to  dying  men. 

'For,'  he  wrote,  7  am  but  a  brand  plucked  from  the 
burning/ 

Again,  when  the  needs  of  the  world  pressed  like 
an  intolerable  burden  upon  his  spirit,  the  same 
thought  decided  his  course.  On  the  one  hand,  he 
saw  a  world  lying  in  darkness  and  crying  for  the 
Hght.  On  the  other  hand,  he  saw  all  those  sweet 
and  sacred  ties  that  bound  him  to  his  native  land 
— his  devoted  people,  his  admiring  friends,  and, 
hardest  tie  of  all  to  break,  the  lady  whom  he  had 
fondly  hoped  to  make  his  bride.  Here,  on  the  one 
hand,  stood  comfort,  popularity,  success  and  love ! 
And  here,  on  the  other,  stood  cruel  hardship,  end- 
less difficulties,  constant  loneliness,  and  an  early 
grave!  'But  how,'  he  writes,  'can  I  hesitate?  /  am 
but  a  brand  plucked  from  the  burning!' 

A  brand  in  peril  of  sharing  the  general  destruc- 
tion! 


S6  A  Handful  of  Stars 

A  brand  seen,  and  prized,  and  rescued! 

A  brand  at  whose  blaze  other  flames  might  be  lit! 

A  brand  plucked  from  the  burning! 


IV 

'Is  not  this  a  brand  plucked  from  the  burning?' 
— it  was  John  Wesley's  text.  To  the  end  of  his 
days  John  Wesley  preserved  the  picture  of  the  fire 
at  the  old  rectory,  the  fire  from  which  he,  as  a  child 
of  six,  was  only  rescued  in  the  nick  of  time.  And, 
underneath  the  picture,  John  Wesley  had  written 
with  his  own  hand  the  words :  'Is  not  this  a  brand 
plucked  from  the  burning?' 

'Is  not  this  a  brand  plucked  from  the  burning?' 
— it  was  John  Fletcher's  text.  John  Wesley 
thought  John  Fletcher,  the  Vicar  of  Madeley,  the 
holiest  man  then  living.  *I  have  known  him  inti- 
mately for  thirty  years,'  says  Mr.  Wesley.  *In  my 
eighty  years  I  have  met  many  excellent  men;  but 
I  have  never  met  his  equal,  nor  do  I  expect  to  find 
such  another  on  this  side  of  eternity.'  From  what 
source  did  that  perennial  stream  of  piety  spring? 
'When  I  saw  that  all  my  endeavors  availed  nothing.' 
says  Mr.  Fletcher,  in  describing  his  conversion,  'I 
almost  gave  up  hope.  But,  I  thought,  Christ  died 
for  all;  therefore  He  died  for  me.  He  died  to 
pluck  such  sinners  as  I  am  as  brands  from  the  burn- 
ing! I  felt  my  helplessness  and  lay  at  the  feet  of 
Christ.     I  cried,   coldly,  yet,   I   believe,   sincerely, 


Henry  Martyn's  Text  87 

"Save  me,  Lord,  as  a  brand  snatched  out  of  the  fire! 
Stretch  forth  Thine  almighty  arm  and  save  Thy 
lost  creature  by  free,  unmerited  grace !"  ' 

'Is  not  this  a  brand  plucked  from  the  burning?" 
— it  was  Thomas  Olivers'  text.  Thomas  Olivers 
was  one  of  Wesley's  veterans,  the  author  of  the 
well-known  hymn,  'The  God  of  Abraham  praise.' 
He  went  one  day  to  hear  George  Whitefield  preach. 
The  text  was,  7^  not  this  a  brand  plucked  from  the 
burning?'  'When  the  sermon  began,'  he  says,  'I 
was  certainly  a  dreadful  enemy  to  God  and  to  all 
that  is  good,  and  one  of  the  most  profligate  and 
abandoned  young  men  living;  but,  by  the  time  it 
was  ended,  I  was  become  a  new  creature.  For,  in 
the  first  place,  I  was  deeply  convinced  of  the  great 
goodness  of  God  towards  me  in  all  my  life;  par- 
ticularly in  that  He  had  given  His  Son  to  die  for 
me.  I  had  also  a  far  clearer  view  of  all  my  sins, 
particularly  my  base  ingratitude  towards  Him. 
These  discoveries  quite  broke  my  heart  and  caused 
showers  of  tears  to  trickle  down  my  cheeks.  I  was 
likewise  filled  with  an  utter  abhorrence  of  my  evil 
ways,  and  was  much  ashamed  that  I  had  ever 
walked  in  them.  And,  as  my  heart  was  thus  turned 
from  all  that  is  evil,  so  it  was  powerfully  inclined 
to  all  that  is  good.  It  is  not  easy  to  express  what 
strong  desires  I  felt  for  God  and  His  service;  and 
what  resolutions  I  made  to  seek  Him  and  serve  Him 
in  the  future.  In  consequence  of  this,  I  broke  off 
all  my  evil  practices,  and  'forsook  all  my  wicked 


38  A  Handful  of  Stars 

and  foolish  companions  without  delay.  I  gave  my- 
self up  to  God  and  His  service  with  my  whole  heart. 
Oh,  what  reason  have  I  to  say,  "Is  not  this  a  brand 
plucked  from  the  burning f"  ' 

'Is  not  this  a  brand  plucked  from  the  burning f 
— it  was  Stephen  Grellet's  text.  Writing  of  his 
conversion,  he  says  that  'the  aw  fulness  of  that  day 
of  God's  visitation  can  never  cease  to  be  remem- 
bered by  me  with  peculiar  gratitude  as  long  as  I 
possess  my  mental  faculties.  I  am  as  a  brand 
plucked  from  the  burning;  I  have  been  rescued 
from  the  brink  of  a  horrible  pit !' 

V 

And  it  was  Henry  Martyn's  text!  'Is  not  this,' 
he  cried,  as  he  entered  the  ministry,  and  again  as 
he  entered  the  mission  field,  'is  not  this  a  brand 
plucked  from  the  burning?' 

A  brand  that  might  have  perished  in  the  general 
destruction! 

A  brand  seen,  and  prized,  and  rescued! 

A  brand  at  whose  blaze  other  flames  might  be  lit! 

A  brand  plucked  from  the  burning! 

'Oh,  let  me  burn  out  for  my  God!'  he  cries,  still 
thinking  of  the  brand  plucked  from  the  flames.  He 
plunges,  like  a  blazing  torch,  into  the  darkness  of 
India,  of  Persia  and  of  Turkey.  He  leaves  the 
peoples  whom  he  has  evangelized  the  Scriptures  in 
their  own  tongues.     Seven  short  years  after  he  left 


Henry  Martyn's  Text  89 

England,  he  dies  all  alone  on  a  foreign  strand.  *No 
kinsman  is  near  to  watch  his  last  look  or  receive 
his  last  words.  No  friend  stands  by  his  couch  to 
whisper  comforting  words,  to  close  his  eyes  or 
wipe  the  death-sweat  from  his  brow.'  In  the  article 
of  death,  he  is  alone  with  his  Lord.  The  brand 
plucked  from  the  blaze  has  soon  burned  out.  But 
what  does  it  matter?  At  its  ardent  flame  a  thou- 
sand other  torches  have  been  ignited ;  and  the  lands 
that  sat  so  long  in  darkness  have  welcomed  the  com- 
ing of  a  wondrous  light ! 


VIII 
MICHAEL  TREVANION'S  TEXT 


Michael  Trevanion  misunderstood  Paul:  that 
was  the  trouble.  Michael,  so  Mark  Rutherford 
tells  us,  was  a  Puritan  of  the  Puritans,  silent,  stern, 
unbending.  Between  his  wife  and  himself  no  sym- 
pathy existed.  They  had  two  children — a  boy  and 
a  girl.  The  girl  was  in  every  way  her  mother's 
child :  the  boy  was  the  image  of  his  father.  Michael 
made  a  companion  of  his  son;  took  him  into  his  own 
workshop;  and  promised  himself  that,  come  what 
might,  Robert  should  grow  up  to  walk  in  his  father's 
footsteps.  All  went  well  until  Robert  Trevanion 
met  Susan  Shipton.  Susan  was  one  of  the  beauties 
of  that  Cornish  village.  She  had — what  were  not 
common  in  Cornwall — light  flaxen  hair,  blue  eyes, 
and  a  rosy  face,  somewhat  inclined  to  be  plump. 
The  Shiptons  lay  completely  outside  Michael's  cir- 
cle. They  were  mere  formalists  in  religion,  fond  of 
pleasure;  and  Susan  especially  was  much  given  to 
gaiety.  She  went  to  picnics  and  dances ;  rowed  her- 
self about  the  bay  with  her  friends;  and  sauntered 
round  the  town  with  her  father  and  mother  on  Sun- 
day afternoons.    She  was  fond  of  bathing,  too,  and 

90 


Michael  Trevanion's  Text  91 

was  a  good  swimmer.  Michael  hardly  knew  how 
to  put  his  objection  in  words,  but  he  nevertheless 
had  a  horror  of  women  who  could  swim.  It  seemed 
to  him  an  ungodly  accomplishment.  He  did  not 
believe  for  a  moment  that  Paul  would  have  sanc- 
tioned it.  That  settled  it  for  Michael.  For  Michael 
had  unbounded  faith  in  the  judgment  of  Paul;  and 
the  tragedy  of  his  life  lay  in  the  fact  that,  on  one 
important  occasion,  he  misunderstood  his  oracle. 

One  summer's  morning,  Robert  saved  Susan  from 
drowning.  She  had  forgotten  the  swirl  of  water 
caused  by  the  rush  of  the  river  into  the  bay,  and 
had  swum  into  the  danger  zone.  In  three  minutes 
Robert  was  at  her  side,  had  gripped  her  by  the 
bathing  dress  at  the  back  of  her  neck,  and  had 
brought  her  into  safer  water.  From  that  moment 
the  two  were  often  together;  and,  one  afternoon, 
Michael  came  suddenly  upon  them  and  guessed  their 
secret.  It  nearly  broke  his  heart.  In  Robert's  at- 
tachment to  Susan  he  saw — or  thought  he  saw — 
the  end  of  all  his  hopes.  'He  remembered  what  his 
own  married  life  had  been;  he  always  trusted  that 
Robert  would  have  a  wife  who  would  be  a  help  to 
him,  and  he  felt  sure  that  this  girl  Shipton,  with 
her  pretty  face  and  blue  eyes,  had  no  brains.  To 
think  that  his  boy  should  repeat  the  same  inex- 
plicable blunder,  that  he  would  never  hear  from  his 
wife's  lips  one  serious  word!  What  would  she  be 
if  trouble  came  upon  him?  She  was  not  a  child  of 
God.     He  did  not  know  that  she  ever  sought  the 


92  A  Handful  of  Stars 

Lord,  She  went  to  church  once  a  day  and  read  her 
prayers,  and  that  was  all.  She  was  not  one  of  the 
chosen ;  she  might  corrupt  Robert  and  he  might  fall 
away  and  so  commit  the  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost. 
He  went  to  his  room,  and,  shutting  the  door,  wept 
bitter  tears.  "O  my  son,  Absalom,"  he  cried,  "my 
son,  my  son  Absalom !  Would  God  I  had  died  for 
thee,  O  Absalom,  my  son,  my  son!" 

It  was  in  these  desperate  straits  that  poor 
Michael  consulted  Paul — and  misunderstood  him. 
It  was  a  Sunday  night.  Michael  picked  up  the 
Bible  and  turned  to  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans.  It 
was  his  favorite  epistle.  He  read  the  ninth  chap- 
ter. The  third  verse  startled  him.  7  could  wish 
that  myself  were  accursed  from  Christ  for  my 
brethren,  my  kinsmen  according  to  the  flesh.'  No- 
body need  wonder  that  the  words  strangely  affected 
him.  In  his  Table  Talk,  Coleridge  says  that  when 
he  read  this  passage  to  a  friend  of  his,  a  Jew  at 
Ramsgate,  the  old  man  burst  into  tears.  'Any  Jew 
of  sensibility,'  the  poet  adds,  'must  be  deeply  im- 
pressed by  it.'  Michael  Trevanion  read  the  throb- 
bing words  again.  7  could  wish  that  myself  were 
accursed  from  Christ  for  my  brethren,  my  kinsmen 
according  to  the  flesh.' 

He  laid  down  the  Book.  'What  did  Paul  mean? 
What  could  he  mean  save  that  he  was  willing  to  be 
damned  to  save  those  whom  he  loved?  And  why 
not?  Why  should  not  a  man  be  willing  to  be 
damned  for  others?    Damnation!    It  is  awful,  hor- 


Michael  Trevanion's  Text  93 

rible.  Millions  of  years,  with  no  relief,  with  no 
light  from  the  Most  High,  and  in  subjection  to 
His  enemy!  "And  yet,  if  it  is  to  save — if  it  is  to 
save  Robert,"  thought  Michael,  "God  give  me 
strength — I  could  endure  it.  Did  not  the  Son  Him- 
self venture  to  risk  the  wrath  of  the  Father  that 
He  might  redeem  man?  What  am  I?  What  is 
my  poor  self?"  And  Michael  determined  that  night 
that  neither  his  life  in  this  world  nor  in  the  next,  if 
he  could  rescue  his  child,  should  be  of  any  account.' 
So  far  Michael  and  Paul  were  of  one  mind.  Now 
for  the  divergence!  Now  for  the  misunderstand- 
ing! Michael  questioned  himself  and  his  oracle 
further.  'What  could  Paul  mean  exactly?  God 
could  not  curse  him  if  he  did  no  wrong.  He  could 
only  mean  that  he  was  willing  to  sin,  and  be  pun- 
ished, provided  Israel  might  live.  It  was  lawful 
then  to  tell  a  lie  or  perpetrate  any  evil  deed  in  order 
to  protect  his  child.'  Michael  therefore  took  his 
resolution.  He  hinted  to  Robert  that  Susan's  his- 
tory was  besmirched  with  shame.  He  left  on  his 
desk — where  he  knew  Robert  would  see  it — a  frag- 
ment of  an  old  letter  referring  to  the  downfall  of 
another  girl  named  Susan.  Michael  knew  that  he 
was  telling  and  acting  a  lie,  a  terrible  and  unpar- 
donable lie.  He  firmly  believed  that,  in  telling  that 
dreadful  lie,  he  was  damning  his  soul  to  all  eter- 
nity. But  in  damning  his  own  soul — so  he  thought 
— he  was  saving  his  son's.  And  that,  after  all, 
was  the  lesson  that  Paul  had  taught  him. 


94  A  Handful  of  Stars 

The  rest  of  the  story  does  not  immediately  con- 
cern us.  Robert,  on  seeing  the  documentary  proof 
of  Susan's  shame,  ran  away  from  home.  Michael, 
overwhelmed  with  wretchedness,  attempted  to 
drown  himself  in  the  swirl  at  the  mouth  of  the 
river.  Of  what  value  was  life  to  him,  now  that  his 
soul  was  everlastingly  lost  ?  'He  awoke  to  find  him- 
self on  the  bank,  with  Susan  bending  over  him 
and  kissing  him.  He  soon  discovered  that  there 
was  more  sense  in  Susan's  head,  and  more  grace 
in  her  heart,  than  he  had  for  one  moment  imagined. 
He  set  out  after  his  son;  found  him;  and  died  in 
making  his  great  and  humiliating  confession.  He 
had  meant  well,  but  he  had  misunderstood.  He  had 
misunderstood  Paul. 

II 

Michael  made  two  mistakes,  and  they  were  grave 
and  tragic  and  fatal  mistakes. 

He  thought  that  good  fruit  could  he  produced 
from  an  evil  tree.  There  are  times  when  it  looks 
possible.  But  it  is  always  an  illusion.  When  I  see 
Michael  Trevanion  in  the  hour  of  his  great  tempta- 
tion, I  wish  I  could  introduce  him  to  Jeanie  Deans. 
For,  in  The  Heart  of  Midlothian,  Sir  Walter  Scott 
has  outlined  a  very  similar  situation.  Poor  Jeanie 
was  tempted  to  save  her  wayward  sister  by  a  lie. 
It  was  a  very  little  lie,  a  mere  glossing  over  of  the 
truth.  The  slightest  deviation  from  actual  veracity, 
and  her  sister's  life,  which  was  dearer  to  her  than 


Michael  Trevanion's  Tezt  95 

her  own,  would  be  saved  from  the  scaffold,  and  her 
family  honor  would  be  vindicated.  But  Jeanie 
could  not,  and  would  not,  believe  that  there  could 
be  salvation  in  a  lie.  With  her  gentle  heart  re- 
proaching her,  but  with  her  conscience  applauding 
her,  she  told  the  truth,  the  whole  truth,  and  nothing 
but  the  truth.  And  then  she  set  out  for  London. 
Along  the  great  white  road  she  trudged,  until  her 
feet  were  bleeding  and  her  exhausted  form  could 
scarcely  drag  itself  along  the  dreadful  miles.  But 
on  she  pressed,  until  she  saw  the  lights  of  London 
town;  and  still  on,  overcoming  every  barrier,  until 
she  stood  before  the  Queen.  And  then  she  pleaded, 
as  no  mere  advocate  could  plead,  for  Effie.  With 
what  passion,  what  entreaties,  what  tears  did  she  be- 
siege the  throne!  And,  before  the  tempest  of  her 
grief  and  eloquence,  the  Queen  yielded  completely 
and  gave  her  her  sister's  life.  To  Jeanie  Deans  and 
to  Michael  Trevanion  there  came  the  same  terrible 
ordeal;  but  Jeanie  stood  where  Michael  fell.  That 
was  the  first  of  his  two  mistakes. 

The  second  was  that  he  thought  that  spiritual  re- 
sults could  he  engineered.  He  fancied  that  souls 
could  be  saved  by  wire-pulling. 

'Robert,'  he  said,  on  the  day  of  his  death  and  of 
his  bitter  confession,  'Robert,  I  have  sinned,  al- 
though it  was  for  the  Lord's  sake,  and  He  has 
rebuked  me.  I  thought  to  take  upon  myself  the  di- 
rection of  His  affairs;  but  He  is  wiser  than  L  I  be- 
lieved I  was  sure  of  His  will,  but  I  was  mistaken. 


96  A  Handful  of  Stars 

He  knows  that  what  I  did,  I  did  for  the  love  of  your 
soul,  my  child ;  but  I  was  grievously  wrong.' 

'The  father,'  says  Mark  Rutherford,  'humbled 
himself  before  the  son,  but  in  his  humiliation  became 
majestic;  and,  in  after  years,  when  he  was  dead 
and  gone,  there  was  no  scene  in  the  long  intercourse 
with  him  which  lived  with  a  brighter  and  fairer 
light  in  the  son's  memory.' 

Ill 

And  so  Michael  Trevanion  sinned  and  suffered 
for  his  sin !  For  my  part,  I  have  no  stones  to  cast 
at  him.  I  would  rather  sit  at  his  feet  and  learn  the 
golden  lesson  of  his  life.  For  love — and  especially 
the  love  of  an  earnest  man  for  another's  soul — 
covers  a  multitude  of  sins.  There  come  to  all  of 
us  mountain  moments,  moments  in  which  we  stand 
on  the  higher  altitudes  and  catch  a  glimpse  of  the 
unutterable  preciousness  of  a  human  soul.  But  we 
are  disobedient  to  the  heavenly  vision.  We  are  like 
Augustine  Saint  Clare  in  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin.  He 
could  never  forget,  he  said,  the  words  with  which 
his  mother  impressed  upon  him  the  dignity  and 
worth  of  the  souls  of  the  slaves.  Those  passionate 
sentences  of  hers  seemed  to  have  burnt  themselves 
into  his  brain.  'I  have  looked  into  her  face  with 
solemn  awe,'  he  told  Miss  Ophelia,  'when  she 
pointed  to  the  stars  in  the  evening  and  said  to  me, 
"See  there,  Auguste!  the  poorest,  meanest  soul  on 


/-I 


Michael  Trevanion's  Text  97 

our  place  will  be  living  when  all  those  stars  are 
gone  for  ever — will  live  as  long  as  God  lives !"  ' 

'Then  why  don't  you  free  your  slaves?'  asked 
Miss  Ophelia,  with  a  woman's  practical  and  in- 
cisive logic. 

'I'm  not  equal  to  that!'  Saint  Clare  replied;  and 
he  confessed  that,  through  having  proved  recreant 
to  the  ideals  that  had  once  so  clearly  presented 
themselves,  he  was  not  the  man  that  he  might  have 
been. 

'I'm  not  equal  to  that!'  said  Augustine  Saint 
Clare. 

But  Michael  Trevanion  was  equal  to  that — and 
to  a  great  deal  more.  He  saw  the  value  of  his  son's 
soul,  and  he  was  willing  to  be  shut  out  of  heaven 
for  ever  and  ever  if  only  Robert  could  be  eternally 
saved !  'My  witness  is  above,'  says  Samuel  Ruther- 
ford, in  his  Second  Letter  to  his  Parishioners,  'my 
witness  is  above  that  your  heaven  would  be  two 
heavens  to  me,  and  the  salvation  of  you  all  as  two 
salvations  to  me.  I  would  agree  to  a  suspension 
and  a  postponement  of  my  heaven  for  many  hun- 
dreds of  years  if  ye  could  so  be  assured  of  a  lodg- 
ing in  the  Father's  house.'  Michael  Trevanion's  be- 
havior— mistaken  as  it  was — proved  that  he  was 
willing  to  make  an  even  greater  sacrifice  if,  by  so 
doing,  he  could  compass  the  salvation  of  his  son. 

IV 

It  is  at  this  point  that  Michael  Trevanion  falls 


gS  A  Handful  of  Stars 

into  line  with  the  great  masters.  Since  the  apos- 
tolic days  we  have  had  two  conspicuously  success- 
ful evangelists — ^John  Wesley  and  Mr.  Spurgeon. 
The  secret  of  their  success  is  so  obvious  that  he 
who  runs  may  read.  I  turn  to  my  edition  of  John 
Wesley's  Journal,  and  at  the  end  I  find  a  tribute 
like  this :  'The  great  purpose  of  his  life  was  doing 
good.  For  this  he  relinquished  all  honor  and  pre- 
ferment; to  this  he  dedicated  all  his  powers  of  body 
and  mind;  at  all  times  and  in  all  places,  in  season 
and  out  of  season,  by  gentleness,  by  terror,  by  ar- 
gument, by  persuasion,  by  reason,  by  interest,  by 
every  motive  and  every  inducement,  he  strove,  with 
unwearied  assiduity,  to  turn  men  from  the  error  of 
their  ways  and  awaken  them  to  virtue  and  religion. 
To  the  bed  of  sickness  or  the  couch  of  prosperity; 
to  the  prison  or  the  hospital ;  to  the  house  of  mourn- 
ing or  the  house  of  feasting,  wherever  there  was  a 
friend  to  serve  or  a  soul  to  save,  he  readily  re- 
paired. He  thought  no  office  too  humiliating,  no 
condescension  too  low,  no  undertaking  too  arduous, 
to  reclaim  the  meanest  of  God's  offspring.  The 
souls  of  all  men  were  equally  precious  in  his  sight 
and  the  value  of  an  immortal  creature  beyond  all 
estimation.' 

In  relation  to  Mr.  Spurgeon,  we  cannot  do  better 
than  place  ourselves  under  Mr.  W.  Y.  Fullerton's 
direction.  Mr.  Fullerton  knew  Mr.  Spurgeon  in- 
timately, and  the  standard  biography  of  the  great 
preacher  is  from  his  pen.     Mr.  Fullerton  devotes 


Michael  Trevanion's  Text  99 

a  good  deal  of  his  space  to  an  inquiry  as  to  the 
sources  of  Mr.  Spurgeon's  power  and  authority. 
It  is  an  elusive  and  difficult  question.  It  is  ad- 
mitted that  there  is  scarcely  one  respect  in  which 
Mr.  Spurgeon's  powers  were  really  transcendent. 
He  had  a  fine  voice;  but  others  had  finer  ones.  He 
was  eloquent ;  but  others  were  no  less  so.  He  used 
to  say  that  his  success  was  due,  not  to  his  preaching 
of  the  Gospel,  but  to  the  Gospel  that  he  preached. 
Obviously,  however,  this  is  beside  the  mark,  for  he 
himself  would  not  have  been  so  uncharitable  as  to 
deny  that  others  preached  the  same  Gospel  and  yet 
met  with  no  corresponding  success.  The  truth 
probably  is  that,  although  he  attained  to  super-ex- 
cellence at  no  point,  he  was  really  great  at  many. 
And,  behind  this  extraordinary  combination  of  re- 
markable, though  not  transcendent,  powers  was  an 
intense  conviction,  a  deadly  earnestness,  a  consum- 
ing passion,  that  made  second-rate  qualities  sub- 
lime. The  most  revealing  paragraph  in  the  book 
occurs  towards  the  end.  It  is  a  quotation  from  Mr. 
Spurgeon  himself.  'Leaving  home  early  in  the 
morning,'  he  says,  *I  went  to  the  vestry  and  sat 
there  all  day  long,  seeing  those  who  had  been 
brought  to  Christ  by  the  preaching  of  the  Word. 
Their  stories  were  so  interesting  to  me  that  the 
hours  flew  by  without  my  noticing  how  fast  they 
were  going.  I  had  seen  numbers  of  persons  during 
the  day,  one  after  the  other ;  and  I  was  so  delighted 
with  the  tales  of  divine  mercy  they  had  to  tell  me. 


zoo  A  Handful  of  Stars 

and  the  wonders  of  grace  God  wrought  in  them, 
that  I  did  not  notice  how  the  time  passed.  At  seven 
o'clock  we  had  our  prayer  meeting.  I  went  in  to  it. 
After  that  came  the  church  meeting.  A  little  before 
ten  I  felt  faint,  and  I  began  to  think  at  what  hour 
I  had  eaten  my  dinner,  and  I  then  for  the  first  time 
remembered  that  /  had  not  had  any!  I  never 
thought  of  it.  I  never  even  felt  hungry,  because 
God  had  made  me  so  glad!'  Mr.  Spurgeon  lived 
that  he  might  save  men.  He  thought  of  nothing 
else.  From  his  first  sermon  at  Waterbeach  to  his 
last  at  Mentone,  the  conversion  of  sinners  was  the 
dream  of  all  his  days.  That  master-passion  glori- 
fied the  whole  man,  and  threw  a  grandeur  about 
the  common  details  of  every  day.  He  would  cheer- 
fully have  thrown  away  his  soul  to  save  the  souls 
of  others. 

It  is  along  this  road  that  the  Church  has  always 
marched  to  her  most  splendid  triumphs.  Why  did 
the  Roman  Empire  so  swiftly  capitulate  to  the 
claims  of  Christ?  Lecky  discusses  that  question  in 
his  History  of  European  Morals.  And  he  answers 
it  by  saying  that  the  conquest  was  achieved  by  the 
new  spirit  which  Christ  had  introduced.  The  idea 
of  a  Saviour  who  could  weep  at  the  sepulcher  of 
His  friend;  and  be  touched  by  a  sense  of  His 
people's  infirmities,  was  a  novelty  to  that  old  pagan 
world.  And  when  the  early  Christians  showed 
themselves  willing  to  endure  any  suffering,  or  bear 
any  loss,  if,   by  so  doing,  they  might  win  their 


Michael  Trevanion's  Text  loi 

friends,  their  sincerity  and  devotion  proved  irre- 
sistible. 

V 

But  Michael  Trevanion  must  lead  us  higher  yet. 
For  what  Michael  Trevanion  learned  from  Paul, 
Paul  himself  had  learned  from  an  infinitely  greater. 
Let  us  trace  it  back ! 

'Let  me  be  damned  to  all  eternity  that  my  boy 
may  be  saved!'  cries  Michael  Trevanion,  sitting  at 
the  feet  of  Paul,  but  misunderstanding  his  teacher. 

7  could  wish  that  myself  were  accursed  from. 
Christ  for  my  brethren,  my  kinsmen  according  to 
the  flesh'  exclaims  Paul,  sitting  at  the  feet  of  One 
who  not  only  wished  to  be  accursed,  but  entered  into 
the  impenetrable  darkness  of  that  dreadful  ana- 
thema. 

'My  God,  my  God,  why  hast  Thou  forsaken  Mef 
He  cried  from  that  depth  of  dereliction.  Tn  that 
awful  hour,'  said  Rabbi  Duncan,  addressing  his 
students,  'in  that  awful  hour  He  took  our  damna- 
tion, and  He  took  it  lovingly!'  When,  with  rever- 
ent hearts  and  bated  breath,  we  peer  down  into  the 
fathomless  deeps  that  such  a  saying  opens  to  us, 
we  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  inexpressible  value  which 
heaven  sets  upon  the  souls  of  men.  And,  when 
Michael  Trevanion  has  led  us  to  such  inaccessible 
heights  and  to  such  unutterable  depths  as  these,  we 
can  very  well  afford  to  say  Good-bye  to  him. 


IX 
HUDSON  TAYLOR'S  TEXT 


The  day  on  which  James  Hudson  Taylor — then  a 
boy  in  his  teens — found  himself  confronted  by  that 
tremendous  text  was,  as  he  himself  testified  in  old 
age,  *a  day  that  he  could  never  forget.'  It  is  a  day 
that  China  can  never  forget;  a  day  that  the  world 
can  never  forget.  It  was  a  holiday;  everybody  was 
away  from  home;  and  the  boy  found  time  hanging 
heavily  upon  his  hands.  In  an  aimless  way  he  wan- 
dered, during  the  afternoon,  into  his  father's  li- 
brary, and  poked  about  among  the  shelves.  *I  tried,' 
he  says,  'to  find  some  book  with  which  to  while 
away  the  leaden  hours.  Nothing  attracting  me,  I 
turned  over  a  basket  of  pamphlets  and  selected  from 
among  them  a  tract  that  looked  interesting.  I  knew 
that  it  would  have  a  story  at  the  commencement 
and  a  moral  at  the  close;  but  I  promised  myself  that 
I  would  enjoy  the  story  and  leave  the  rest.  It 
would  be  easy  to  put  away  the  tract  as  soon  as  it 
should  seem  prosy.'  He  scampers  off  to  the  stable- 
loft,  throws  himself  on  the  hay,  and  plunges  into 
the  book.  He  is  captivated  by  the  narrative,  and 
finds  it  impossible  to  drop  the  book  when  the  story 
comes  to  an  end.    He  reads  on  and  on.    He  is  re- 

102 


Hudson  Taylor's  Text  103 

warded  by  one  great  golden  word  whose  significance 
he  has  never  before  discovered :  'The  Finished  Work 
of  Christ!'  The  theme  entrances  him;  and  at  last 
he  only  rises  from  his  bed  in  the  soft  hay  that  he 
may  kneel  on  the  hard  floor  of  the  loft  and  sur- 
render his  young  life  to  the  Saviour  who  had  sur- 
rendered everything  for  him.  If,  he  asked  himself, 
as  he  lay  upon  the  hay,  if  the  whole  work  was  fin- 
ished, and  the  whole  debt  paid  upon  the  Cross,  what 
is  there  left  for  me  to  do?  'And  then,'  he  tells  us, 
'there  dawned  upon  nie  the  joyous  conviction  that 
there  was  nothing  in  the  world  to  be  done  but  to  fall 
upon  my  knees,  accept  the  Saviour  and  praise  Him 
for  evermore.' 

'It  is  finished!' 

'When  Jesus,  therefore,  had  received  the  vinegar 
he  said,  "It  is  finished!"  and  He  bowed  His  head 
and  gave  up  the  ghost.' 

'Then  there  dawned  upon  me  the  joyous  convic- 
tion that,  since  the  whole  work  was  finished  and  the 
whole  debt  paid  upon  the  Cross,  there  was  nothing 
for  me  to  do  but  to  fall  upon  my  knees,  accept  the 
Saviour  and  praise  Him  for  evermore!' 

II 

'It  is  finished!' 

It  is  really  only  one  word :  the  greatest  word  ever 
uttered;  we  must  examine  it  for  a  moment  as  a 
lapidary  examines  under  a  powerful  glass  a  rare 
and  costly  gem. 


104  A  Handful  of  Stars 

It  was  a  farmer's  word.  When,  into  his  herd, 
there  was  bom  an  animal  so  beautiful  and  shapely 
that  it  seemed  absolutely  destitute  of  faults  and 
defects,  the  farmer  gazed  upon  the  creature  with 
proud,  delighted  eyes.  'TetelestaH'  he  said, 
*tetelestai!' 

It  was  an  artist's  word.  When  the  painter  or  the 
sculptor  had  put  the  last  finishing  touches  to  the 
vivid  landscape  or  the  marble  bust,  he  would  stand 
back  a  few  feet  to  admire  his  masterpiece,  and,  see- 
ing in  it  nothing  that  called  for  correction  or  im- 
provement, would  murmur  fondly,  'TetelestaH 
tetelestai!' 

It  was  a  priestly  word.  When  some  devout  wor- 
shiper, overflowing  with  gratitude  for  mercies 
shown  him,  brought  to  the  temple  a  lamb  without 
spot  or  blemish,  the  pride  of  the  whole  flock,  the 
priest,  more  accustomed  to  seeing  the  blind  and  de- 
fective animals  led  to  the  altar,  would  look  admir- 
ingly upon  the  pretty  creature.  'TetelestaH'  he 
would  say,  'tetelestai!' 

And  when,  in  the  fullness  of  time,  the  Lamb  of 
God  offered  Himself  on  the  altar  of  the  ages.  He 
rejoiced  with  a  joy  so  triumphant  that  it  bore  down 
all  His  anguish  before  it.  The  sacrifice  was  stain- 
less, perfect,  finished!  'He  cried  with  a  loud  voice 
Tetelestai!  and  gave  up  the  ghost.' 

This  divine  self-satisfaction  appears  only  twice, 
once  in  each  Testament.  When  He  completed  the 
work  of  Creation,  He  looked  upon  it  and  said  that 


Hudson  Taylor's  Text  105 

it  was  very  good;  when  He  completed  the  work  of 
Redemption  He  cried  with  a  loud  voice  Tetelestai! 
It  means  exactly  the  same  thing. 


HI 

The  joy  of  finishing  and  of  finishing  well!  How 
passionately  good  men  have  coveted  for  themselves 
that  ecstasy!  I  think  of  those  pathetic  entries  in 
Livingstone's  journal,  *0h,  to  finish  my  work!' 
he  writes  again  and  again.  He  is  haunted  by  the 
vision  of  the  unseen  waters,  the  fountains  of  the 
Nile.  Will  he  live  to  discover  them  ?  'Oh,  to  finish !' 
he  cries;  *if  only  I  could  finish  my  work!'  I  think 
of  Henry  Buckle,  the  author  of  the  History  of 
Civilization.  He  is  overtaken  by  fever  at  Nazareth 
and  dies  at  Damascus.  In  his  delirium  he  raves 
continually  about  his  book,  his  still  unfinished  book. 
*0h,  to  finish  my  book !'  And  with  the  words  *My 
book!  my  book!'  upon  his  burning  lips,  his  spirit 
slips  away,  I  think  of  Henry  Martyn  sitting  amidst 
the  delicious  and  fragrant  shades  of  a  Persian  gar- 
den, weeping  at  having  to  leave  the  work  that  he 
seemed  to  have  only  just  begun.  I  think  of  Dore 
taking  a  sad  farewell  of  his  unfinished  Vale  of 
Tears;  of  Dickens  tearing  himself  from  the  manu- 
script that  he  knew  would  never  be  completed;  of 
Macaulay  looking  with  wistful  and  longing  eyes 
at  the  History  and  The  Armada  that  must  for  ever 
stand  as  'fragments' ;  and  of  a  host  besides.    Life  is 


io6  A  Handful  of  Stars 

often  represented  by  a  broken  column  in  the  church- 
yard. Men  long,  but  long  in  vain,  for  the  priceless 
privilege  of  finishing  their  work. 


IV 

The  joy  of  finishing  and  of  finishing  well !  There 
is  no  joy  on  earth  comparable  to  this.  Who  is  there 
that  has  not  read  a  dozen  times  the  immortal  post- 
script that  Gibbon  added  to  his  Decline  and  Fall? 
He  describes  the  tumult  of  emotion  with  which, 
after  twenty  years  of  closest  application,  he  wrote 
the  last  line  of  the  last  chapter  of  the  last  volume  of 
his  masterpiece.  It  was  a  glorious  summer's  night 
at  Lausanne.  'After  laying  down  my  pen,'  he  says, 
T  took  several  turns  in  a  covered  walk  of  acacias 
which  commands  a  prospect  of  the  country,  the 
lake  and  the  mountains.  The  air  was  temperate, 
the  sky  was  serene,  the  silver  orb  of  the  moon  was 
reflected  from  the  waters,  and  all  nature  was  silent.' 
It  was  the  greatest  moment  of  his  life.  We  recall, 
too,  the  similar  experience  of  Sir  Archibald  Alison. 
'As  I  approached  the  closing  sentence  of  my  His- 
tory of  the  Empire/  he  says,  T  went  up  to  Mrs. 
Alison  to  call  her  down  to  witness  the  conclusion, 
and  she  saw  the  last  words  of  the  work  written, 
and  signed  her  name  on  the  margin.  It  would  be 
affectation  to  conceal  the  deep  emotion  that  I  felt 
at  this  event.'  Or  think  of  the  last  hours  of  Vener- 
able Bede.     Living  away  back  in  the  early  dawn 


Hudson  Taylor's  Text  107 

of  our  English  story — twelve  centuries  ago — the  old 
man  had  set  himself  to  translate  the  Gospel  of 
John  into  our  native  speech.  Cuthbert,  one  of  his 
young  disciples,  has  bequeathed  to  us  the  touching 
record.  As  the  work  approached  completion,  he 
says,  death  drew  on  apace.  The  aged  scholar  was 
racked,  with  pain;  sleep  forsook  him;  he  could 
scarcely  breathe.  The  young  man  who  wrote  at 
his  dictation  implored  him  to  desist.  But  he  would 
not  rest.  They  came  at  length  to  the  final  chapter ; 
could  he  possibly  live  till  it  was  done? 

'And  now,  dear  master,'  exclaimed  the  young 
scribe  tremblingly,  'only  one  sentence  remains !'  He 
read  the  words  and  the  sinking  man  feebly  recited 
the  English  equivalents. 

'It  is  finished,  dear  master!'  cried  the  youth  ex- 
citedly. 

'Ay,  it  is  finished!'  echoed  the  dying  saint;  'lift 
me  up,  place  me  at  that  window  of  my  cell  at  which 
I  have  so  often  prayed  to  God.  Now  glory  be  to 
the  Father  and  to  the  Son  and  to  the  Holy  Ghost !' 
And,  with  these  triumphant  words,  the  beautiful 
spirit  passed  to  its  rest  and  its  reward. 

V 

In  his  own  narrative  of  his  conversion,  Hudson 
Taylor  quotes  James  Proctor's  well-known  hymn — 
the  hymn  that,  in  one  of  his  essays,  Froude  criti- 
cizes so  severely: 


io8  A  Handful  of  Stars 

Nothing  either  great  or  small. 

Nothing,    sinner,    no; 
Jesus  did  it,  did  it  all, 

Long,  long  ago. 

'It  is  Finished!'  yes,  indeed. 

Finished  every  jot; 
Sinner,  this  is  all  you  need; 

Tell  me,  is  it  not? 

Cast  your  deadly  doing  down, 

Down  at  Jesus'  feet; 
Stand  in  Him,  in  Him  alone. 

Gloriously  complete. 

Froude  maintains  that  these  verses  are  immoral. 
It  is  only  by  'doing,'  he  argues,  that  the  work  of 
the  world  can  ever  get  done.  And  if  you  describe 
Moing'  as  'deadly'  you  set  a  premium  upon  indo- 
lence and  lessen  the  probabilities  of  attainment. 
The  best  answer  to  Froude's  plausible  contention  is 
the  Life  of  Hudson  Taylor.  Hudson  Taylor  be- 
came convinced,  as  a  boy,  that  'the  whole  work  was 
finished  and  the  whole  debt  paid.'  'There  is  nothing 
for  me  to  do,'  he  says,  'but  to  fall  down  on  my 
knees  and  accept  the  Saviour.'  The  chapter  in  his 
biography  that  tells  of  this  spiritual  crisis  is  entitled 
'The  Finished  Work  of  Christ,'  and  it  is  headed 
by  the  quotation : 

Upon  a  life  I  did  not  live, 

Upon  a  death  I  did  not  die. 
Another's  life,  Another's  death 

I  stake  my  whole  eternity. 


Hudson  Taylor's  Text  109 

And,  as  I  have  said,  the  very  words  that  Froude 
so  bitterly  condemns  are  quoted  by  Hudson  Taylor 
as  a  reflection  of  his  own  experience.  And  the 
result?  The  result  is  that  Hudson  Taylor  became 
one  of  the  most  prodigious  toilers  of  all  time.  So 
far  from  his  trust  in  'the  Finished  Work  of  Christ' 
inclining  him  to  indolence,  he  felt  that  he  must  toil 
most  terribly  to  make  so  perfect  a  Saviour  known 
to  the  whole  wide  world.  There  lies  on  my  desk 
a  Birthday  Book  which  I  very  highly  value.  It  was 
given  me  at  the  docks  by  Mr.  Thomas  Spurgeon  as 
I  was  leaving  England.  If  you  open  it  at  the 
twenty-first  of  May  you  will  find  these  words : 
'  "Simply  to  Thy  Cross  I  cling"  is  but  half  of  the 
Gospel.  No  one  is  really  clinging  to  the  Cross  who 
is  not  at  the  same  time  faithfully  following  Christ 
and  doing  whatsoever  He  commands' ;  and  against 
those  words  of  Dr.  J.  R.  Miller's  in  my  Birthday 
Book,  you  may  see  the  autograph  of  /.  Hudson  Tay- 
lor. He  was  our  guest  at  the  Mosgiel  Manse  when 
he  set  his  signature  to  those  striking  and  significant 
sentences. 

VI 

'We  Build  Like  Giants;  we  Finish  Like  Jewelers!' 
— so  the  old  Egyptians  wrote  over  the  portals  of 
their  palaces  and  temples.  I  like  to  think  that  the 
most  gigantic  task  ever  attempted  on  this  planet — 
the  work  of  the  world's  redemption — was  finished 


no  A  Handful  of  Stars 

with  a  precision  and  a  nicety  that  no  jeweler  could 
rival. 

7/  is  finished!'  He  cried  from  the  Cross. 

'Tetelestai!    Tetelestai!' 

When  He  looked  upon  His  work  in  Creation  and 
saw  that  it  was  good,  He  placed  it  beyond  the  power 
of  man  to  improve  upon  it. 

To  gild  refined  gold,  to  paint  the  lily, 

To  throw  a  perfume  on  the  violet. 

To  smooth  the  ice,  or  add  another  hue 

Unto  the  rainbow,  or  with  taper-light 

To  seek  the  beauteous  eye  of  heaven  to  garnish, 

Is  wasteful  and  ridiculous  excess. 

And,  similarly,  when  He  looked  upon  His  work 
in  Redemption  and  cried  triumphantly  'Tetelestai/ 
He  placed  it  beyond  the  power  of  any  man  to  add 
to  it. 

There  are  times  when  any  addition  is  a  subtrac- 
tion. Some  years  ago.  White  House  at  Washington 
— the  residence  of  the  American  Presidents — was 
in  the  hands  of  the  painters  and  decorators.  Two 
large  entrance  doors  had  been  painted  to  represent 
black  walnut.  The  contractor  ordered  his  men  to 
scrape  and  clean  them  in  readiness  for  repainting, 
and  they  set  to  work.  But  when  their  knives  pene- 
trated to  the  solid  timber,  they  discovered  to  their 
astonishment  that  it  was  heavy  mahogany  of  a  most 
exquisite  natural  grain!  The  work  of  that  earlier 
decorator,  so  far  from  adding  to  the  beauty  of  the 
timber,  had  only  served  to  conceal  its  essential  and 


Hudson  Taylor's  Text  m 

inherent  glory.  It  is  easy  enough  to  add  to  the 
wonders  of  Creation  or  of  Redemption;  but  you  can 
never  add  without  subtracting.    'It  is  finished!' 


VII 

Many  years  ago,  Ebenezer  Wooton,  an  earnest 
but  eccentric  evangelist,  was  conducting  a  series  of 
summer  evening  services  on  the  village  green  at 
Lidford  Brook.  The  last  meeting  had  been  held; 
the  crowd  was  melting  slowly  away;  and  the  evan- 
gelist was  engaged  in  taking  down  the  marquee. 
All  at  once  a  young  fellow  approached  him  and 
asked,  casually  rather  than  earnestly,  'Mr.  Wooton, 
what  must  I  do  to  be  saved?'  The  preacher  took 
the  measure  of  his  man. 

'Too  late!'  he  said,  in  a  matter  of  fact  kind  of 
way,  glancing  up  from  a  somewhat  obstinate  tent- 
peg  with  which  he  was  struggling.  'Too  late,  my 
friend,  too  late!'     The  young  fellow  was  startled. 

'Oh,  don't  say  that,  Mr.  Wooton!'  he  pleaded, 
a  new  note  coming  into  his  voice.  'Surely  it  isn't 
too  late  just  because  the  meetings  are  over?' 

'Yes,  my  friend,'  exclaimed  the  evangelist,  drop- 
ping the  cord  in  his  hand,  straightening  himself  up, 
and  looking  right  into  the  face  of  his  questioner, 
'it's  too  late !  You  want  to  know  what  you  must  do 
to  be  saved,  and  I  tell  you  that  you're  hundreds  of 
years  too  late!  The  work  of  salvation  is  done,  com- 
pleted, finished!    It  was  finished  on  the  Cross ;  Jesus 


112  A  Handful  of  Stars 

said  so  with  the  last  breath  that  He  drew!    What 
more  do  you  want?' 

And,  then  and  there,  it  dawned  upon  the  now 
earnest  inquirer  on  the  village  green  as,  at  about 
the  same  time,  it  dawned  upon  young  Hudson 
Taylor  in  the  hay-loft,  that  'since  the  whole  work 
was  finished  and  the  whole  debt  paid  upon  the  Cross, 
there  was  nothing  for  him  to  do  but  to  fall  upon  his 
knees  and  accept  the  Saviour/  And  there,  under 
the  elms,  the  sentinel  stars  witnessing  the  great 
transaction,  he  kneeled  in  glad  thanksgiving  and 
rested  his  soul  for  time  and  for  eternity  on  'the  Fin- 
ished Work  of  Christ/ 

vni 

'The  Finished  Work  of  Christ!' 

'Tetelestai!   Tetelestai!' 

'It  is  finished!' 

It  is  not  a  sigh  of  relief  at  having  reached  the 
end  of  things.  It  is  the  unutterable  joy  of  the  artist 
who,  putting  the  last  touches  to  the  picture  that  has 
engrossed  him  for  so  long,  sees  in  it  the  realization 
of  all  his  dreams  and  can  nowhere  find  room  for 
improvement.  Only  once  in  the  world's  history  did 
a  finishing  touch  bring  a  work  to  absolute  perfec- 
tion; and  on  that  day  of  days  a  single  flaw  would 
have  shattered  the  hope  of  the  ages. 


X 

RODNEY  STEELE'S  TEXT 


*As  soon,'  Dr.  Chalmers  used  to  say,  *as  soon  as  a 
man  comes  to  understand  that  GOD  IS  LOVE,  he 
is  infallibly  converted.'  Mrs.  Florence  L.  Barclay 
wrote  a  book  to  show  how  Rodney  Steele  made  that 
momentous  and  transfiguring  discovery.  Rodney 
Steele — the  hero  of  The  Wall  of  Partition — was  a 
great  traveler  and  a  brilHant  author.  He  had  wan- 
dered through  India,  Africa,  Australia,  Egypt, 
China  and  Japan,  and  had  written  a  novel  colored 
with  the  local  tints  of  each  of  the  countries  he  had 
visited.  He  was  tall,  strong,  handsome,  bronzed  by 
many  suns,  and — largely  as  a  result  of  his  literary 
successes — immensely  rich.  But  he  was  soured. 
Years  ago  he  loved  a  beautiful  girl.  But  an  un- 
scrupulous and  designing  woman  had  gained  his 
sweetheart's  confidence  and  had  poisoned  her  heart 
by  pouring  into  her  ear  the  most  abominable  scan- 
dals concerning  him.  She  had  returned  his  letters ; 
and  he,  in  the  vain  hope  of  being  able  to  forget,  had 
abandoned  himself  to  travel  and  to  literature.  But, 
on  whatever  seas  he  sailed,  and  on  whatever  shores 
he  wandered,  he  nursed  in  his  heart  a  dreadful  hate 

"3 


114  A  Handful  of  Stars 

— a  hate  of  the  woman  who  had  so  cruelly  inter- 
vened. And,  cherishing  that  hate,  his  heart  became 
hard  and  bitter  and  sour.  He  lost  faith  in  love,  in 
womanhood,  in  God,  in  everything.  And  his  books 
reflected  the  cynicism  of  his  soul.  This  is  Rodney 
Steele  as  the  story  opens.  The  boat-train  moves  into 
Charing  Cross,  and,  after  an  absence  of  ten  years, 
he  finds  himself  once  more  in  London. 


II 

Many  years  ago,  when  our  grandmothers  were 
^irls,  they  devoted  their  spare  moments  to  the  mak- 
ing of  bookmarkers;  and  on  the  marker,  in  colored 
silk,  they  embroidered  the  letters  GOD  IS  LOVE. 
Dr.  Handley  Moule,  Bishop  of  Durham,  made  ef- 
fective use  of  such  a  bookmarker  when  he  visited 
West  Stanley  immediately  after  the  terrible  colliery 
disaster  there.  He  motored  up  to  the  scene  of  the 
catastrophe  and  addressed  the  crowd  at  the  pit's 
mouth.  Many  of  those  present  were  the  relatives 
of  the  entombed  miners.  *It  is  very  difficult,'  he 
said,  'for  us  to  understand  why  God  should  let  such 
an  awful  disaster  happen,  but  we  know  Him,  and 
trust  Him,  and  all  will  be  right.  I  have  at  home,' 
the  Bishop  continued,  *an  old  bookmarker  given  me 
by  my  mother.  It  is  worked  in  silk,  and,  when  I 
examine  the  wrong  side  of  it,  I  see  nothing  but  a 
tangle  of  threads  crossed  and  recrossed.  It  looks 
like  a  big  mistake.    One  would  think  that  someone 


Rodney  Steele's  Text  115 

had  done  it  who  did  not  know  what  she  was  doing. 
But,  when  I  turn  it  over  and  look  at  the  right  side, 
I  see  there,  beautifully  embroidered,  the  letters  GOD 
IS  LOVE.  We  are  looking  at  all  this  to-day,'  he 
concluded,  'from  the  wrong  side.  Some  day  we 
shall  see  it  from  another  standpoint,  and  shall  under- 
stand.' This  all  happened  many  years  ago;  but 
quite  recently  some  who  were  present  declared  that 
they  never  forgot  the  s;tory  of  the  bookmarker  and 
the  comfort  that  it  brought. 

It  was  a  bookmarker  of  exactly  the  same  kind, 
and  bearing  precisely  the  same  inscription,  that 
brought  the  fragrance  of  roses  into  the  dusty  heart 
of  Rodney  Steele.  Sitting  alone  in  his  Harley  Street 
flat,  he  found  himself  turning  over  the  pages  of  a 
Bible  that  belonged  to  Mrs.  Jake,  his  housekeeper. 
Among  those  pages  he  found  Mrs.  Jake's  marriage 
'lines,'  a  photograph  of  her  husband  in  military 
uniform,  some  pressed  flowers  and — a  perforated 
bookmarker !  And  on  the  bookmarker,  in  pink  silk, 
were  embroidered  the  words:  GOD  IS  LOVE.  It 
reminded  him  of  those  far-off  days  in  which,  as  a 
little  boy,  he  had  delighted  in  the  possession  of  his 
first  box  of  paints.  He  had  begged  his  mother  to 
give  him  something  to  color,  and  she  had  pricked 
out  those  very  words  on  a  card  and  asked  him  to 
paint  them  for  her. 

God!    Love? 

Love!    God! 

God  is  Love! 


ii6  A  Handful  of  Stars 

So  said  the  bookmarker;  but,  he  reflected  sadly, 
love  had  failed  him  long  ago,  and  of  God  he  had  no 
knowledge  at  all. 

Ill 

When  those  three  tremendous  words  next  con- 
fronted Rodney  Steele,  they  were  worked,  not  in 
silk,  but  in  stone !  In  a  lower  flat,  in  the  same  build- 
ing in  Harley  Street,  there  dwelt  a  Bishop's  widow. 
Rodney  got  to  know  her,  to  like  her,  and,  at  last, 
to  confide  in  her.  One  afternoon  they  were  dis- 
cussing the  novel  that  all  London  was  reading,  The 
Great  Divide.  It  was  from  his  own  pen,  but  he  did 
not  tell  her  so.  Mrs.  Bellamy — the  widow — con- 
fessed that,  in  spite  of  its  brilliance,  she  did  not  like 
it.  It  betrayed  bitterness,  a  loss  of  ideals,  a  disbe- 
lief in  love;  it  was  not  uplifting. 

*It  is  life,*  Rodney  repHed.  'Life  tends  to  make 
a  man  lose  faith  in  love.' 

But  Mrs.  Bellamy  would  not  hear  of  it. 

'May  I  tell  you,'  she  asked,  'the  Bishop's  way  of 
meeting  all  difficulties,  sorrows  and  perplexities?' 

*Do  tell  me,'  said  Rodney. 

'He  met  them  with  three  little  words,  each  of  one 
syllable.  Yet  that  sentence  holds  the  truth  of  great- 
est import  to  our  poor  world;  and  its  right  under- 
standing re-adjusts  our  entire  outlook  upon  life, 
and  should  affect  all  our  dealings  with  our  fellow 
men :  GOD  IS  LOVE.  In  our  first  home — a  coun- 
try parish  in  Surrey — three  precious  children  were 


Bodney  Steele's  Text  117 

born  to  us — Griselda,  Irene  and  little  Launcelot. 
Scarlet  fever  and  diphtheria  broke  out  in  the  village, 
a  terrible  epidemic,  causing  grief  and  anxiety  in 
many  homes.  We  were  almost  worn  out  with  help- 
ing our  poor  people — nursing,  consoling,  encourag- 
ing. Then,  just  as  the  epidemic  appeared  to  be  abat- 
ing, it  reached  our  own  home.  Our  darlings  were 
stricken  suddenly.  Mr.  Steele,  we  lost  all  three  in 
a  fortnight!  My  little  Lancy  was  the  last  to  go. 
When  he  died  in  my  arms  I  felt  I  could  bear  no 
more. 

'My  husband  led  me  out  into  the  garden.  It  was 
a  soft,  sweet,  summer  night.  He  took  me  in  his 
arms  and  stood  long  in  silence,  looking  up  to  the 
quiet  stars,  while  I  sobbed  upon  his  breast.  At  last 
he  said,  "My  wife,  there  is  one  rope  to  which  we 
must  cling  steadfastly,  in  order  to  keep  our  heads 
above  water  amid  these  overwhelming  waves  of 
sorrow.  It  has  three  golden  strands.  It  will  not 
fail  us.    GOD— IS— LOVE." 

'The  nursery  was  empty.  There  was  no  more 
patter  of  little  feet;  no  children's  merry  voices 
shouted  about  the  house.  The  three  little  graves 
in  the  churchyard  bore  the  names  Griselda,  Irene 
and  Launcelot;  and  on  each  we  put  the  text,  spelt 
out  by  the  initials  of  our  darlings'  names:  GOD 
IS  LOVE.  And  in  our  own  heart-life  we  experi- 
enced the  great  calm  and  peace  of  a  faith  which  had 
come  through  the  deepest  depths  of  sorrow.  We 
were  sustained  by  the  certainty  of  the  love  of  God.' 


ii8  A  Handful  of  Staxs 

Rodney  Steele  was  deeply  touched  and  impressed. 
Here  was  one  who  had  known  sorrow  and  had 
been  sweetened  by  it.  In  her  there  was  no  trace  of 
bitterness. 

'I  don't  know,'  he  said  to  himself,  as  he  came 
away,  *I  don't  know  as  to  the  truth  of  the  Bishop's 
text ;  but,  anyway,  the  Bishop's  widow  is  love.  She 
lives  what  she  believes,  and  that  certainly  makes  a 
belief  worth  having.' 

'God  is  love!' — he  had  seen  it  worked  in  silk. 

'God  is  love' — he  had  seen  it  inscribed  three  times 
in  stone. 

'God  is  love!' — he  had  seen  it  translated  into 
actual  life. 

'God  is  love!' — he  was  almost  persuaded  to  be- 
lieve it. 

IV 

God  is .' 

It  is  the  oldest  question  in  the  universe,  and  the 
greatest.  It  has  been  asked  a  million  million  times, 
and  it  would  not  have  been  altogether  strange  had 
we  never  discovered  an  answer.  In  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells' 
story  of  the  men  who  invaded  the  moon,  he  describes 
a  conversation  between  the  travelers  and  the  Grand 
Lunar.  The  Grand  Lunar  asks  them  many  ques- 
tions about  the  earth  which  they  are  unable  to  an- 
swer. 'What?'  he  exclaims,  'knowing  so  little  of 
the  earth,  do  you  attempt  to  explore  the  moon?'  We 
men  know  little  enough  of  ourselves:  it  would  have 


Rodney  Steele's  Text  119 

been  no  cause  for  astonishment  had  we  been  unable 
to  define  God.  Men  lost  themselves  for  ages  in 
guess-work.  They  looked  round  about  them;  they 
saw  how  grandly  a  million  worlds  revolve,  and  they 
noticed  how  exquisitely  the  mighty  forces  of  the 
earth  are  governed.  Then  they  made  their  guess. 
'God  is  Power/  they  said,  'God  is  Power!' 
Then,  peering  a  little  more  deeply  into  the  heart 
of  things,  they  saw  that  all  these  terrific  forces  are 
not  only  controlled,  but  harnessed  to  high  ends.  All 
things  are  working — they  are  working  together — ■ 
they  are  working  together  for  good!  And  there- 
upon men  made  their  second  guess. 

'God  is  Wisdom/  they  said,  'God  is  Wisdom!' 
Then,  observing  things  still  more  closely,  men 
began  to  see  great  ethical  principles  underlying  the 
laws  of  the  universe.    In  the  long  run,  evil  suffers, 
and,  in  the  long  run,  right  is  rewarded. 
'God  is  Justice/  they  said,  'God  is  Justice!' 
And  so  men  made  their  guesses,  and,   as  they 
guessed,  they  built.     They  erected  temples,  now  to 
the  God  of  Power,  then  to  the  God  of  Wisdom,  and 
again  to  the  God  of  Justice.    They  had  yet  to  learn 
that  they  were  worshiping  the  part  and  not  the 
whole;  they  were  worshiping  the  rays  and  not  the 
Light  Itself. 

Then  Jesus  came,  and  men  understood.  By  His 
words  and  His  deeds,  by  His  life  and  His  death. 
He  revealed  the  whole  truth.  God  is  Power  and 
Wisdom  and  Justice — but  He  is  more.     In  a  Euro- 


I20  A  Handful  of  Stars 

pean  churchyard  there  stands  a  monument  erected 
by  a  poet  to  his  wife.    It  bears  the  inscription : 

She  was , 


But  words  are  wanting  to  say  what ! 
Think  what  a  wife  should  be 
And  she  was  that ! 


God  is / 

God  is — what? 

He  is 


But  words  are  wanting  to  say  what! 
Think  what  a  God  should  be 
And  He  is  that! 

Jesus  filled  in  the  age-long  blank;  He  filled  it  in, 
not  in  cold  language,  but  in  warm  life.  Many  at- 
tempts have  been  made  to  translate  His  definition 
from  the  terms  of  life  into  the  terms  of  language. 
Only  once  have  those  attempts  been  even  approxi- 
mately successful.  The  words  on  the  perforated 
bookmarker  represent  the  best  answer  that  human 
speech  has  ever  given  to  the  question. 

God  is 

God  is — what? 

GOD— IS— LOVE! 

V 

Rodney  Steele  met  again  the  girl — ripened  now 
into  the  full  glory  of  womanhood — from  whom  he 
had  been  so  cruelly  separated.  He  felt  that  it  was 
too  late  to  right  the  earlier  wrong ;  and,  in  any  case, 


Rodney  Steele's  Text  121 

his  life  was  too  embittered  to  offer  her  now.  But 
he  rejoiced  in  her  friendship,  and,  one  day,  opened 
his  heart  to  her, 

*Madge/  he  said,  *I  am  furious  with  Fate.  Life  is 
chaos.  Shall  I  tell  you  of  what  it  reminds  me? 
When  I  was  last  in  Florence  I  was  invited  to  the 
dress  rehearsal  of  "Figli  Di  Re."  I  took  my  seat 
in  the  stalls  of  the  huge  empty  opera  house.  The 
members  of  the  orchestra  were  all  in  their  places. 
Pandemonium  reigned!  Each  man  was  playing 
little  snatches  of  the  score  before  him,  all  in  the 
same  key,  but  with  no  attempt  at  time,  tune  or  order. 
The  piping  of  the  flute,  the  sighing  of  the  fiddle,  the 
grunt  of  the  double  bass,  the  clear  call  of  the  cornet, 
the  bray  of  the  trombones,  all  went  on  together. 
The  confused  hubbub  of  sound  was  indescribable. 
Suddenly  a  slim,  alert  figure  leaped  upon  the  estrade 
and  struck  the  desk  sharply  with  a  baton.  It  was  the 
maestro!  There  was  instant  silence.  He  looked 
to  the  right;  looked  to  the  left;  raised  his  baton; 
and  lo !  full,  rich,  sweet,  melodious,  blending  in  per- 
fect harmony,  sounded  the  opening  chords  of  the 
overture !' 

Rodney  likened  the  jangling  discords  to  the  con- 
fusion of  his  own  life.  There  was  in  his  soul  a  dis- 
appointed love,  an  implacable  hate,  and  a  medley 
of  other  discords. 

'You  are  waiting  for  the  Maestro,  Roddie!'  said 
Madge.  *His  baton  will  reduce  chaos  to  order  with 
a  measure  of  three  beats.' 


122  A  Handful  of  Stars 

'Three  beats?' 

'Yes ;  three  almighty  beats :  GOD— IS— LOVE !' 

He  shook  his  head. 

'I  left  off  pricking  texts  when  I  was  five,  and  gave 
up  painting  when  I  was  nine.' 

'It  is  not  what  you  do  to  the  texts,  Rodney;  it 
is  what  the  texts  do  to  you !' 

He  left  her,  and,  soon  after,  left  London. 

VI 

Yes,  he  left  her,  and  he  left  London;  but  he  could 
not  leave  the  text.  It  confronted  him  once  more. 
He  had  taken  refuge  in  a  little  fishing  village  on 
the  East  Coast.  Up  on  the  cliffs,  among  the  corn- 
fields, flecked  with  their  crimson  poppies,  he  came 
upon  a  quaint  old  church.  He  stepped  inside.  In 
the  porch  was  a  painting  of  an  old  ruin — ivy-cov- 
ered, useless  and  desolate — standing  out,  jagged  and 
roofless,  against  a  purple  sky.  The  picture  bore  a 
striking  inscription: 

The  ruins  of  my  soul  repair 

And  make  my  heart  a  house  of  prayer. 

'The  ruins  of  my  soul!'  Rodney  thought  of  the 
discord  within. 

'Make  my  heart  a  house  of  prayer!'  Rodney 
thought  of  the  maestro. 

He  passed  out  into  the  little  graveyard  on  the 
very  edge  of  the  cliff.    He  was  amused  at  the  quaint 


Rodney  Steele's  Text  123 

epitaphs.  Then  one  tombstone,  lying  flat  upon  the 
ground,  a  tombstone  which,  in  large  capitals,  called 
upon  the  reader  to  'Prepare  to  meet  thy  God,' 
startled  him.  Again  he  thought  of  the  clashing  dis- 
cords of  his  soul. 

'Then,  suddenly,'  says  Mrs.  Barclay,  'the  inspired 
Word  did  that  which  It — and  It  alone — can  do. 
It  gripped  Rodney  and  brought  him  face  to  face 
with  realities — past,  present  and  future — in  his  own 
inner  life.  At  once,  the  Bishop's  motto  came  into 
his  mind ;  the  three  words  his  gentle  mother  used  to 
draw  that  her  little  boy  might  paint  them  stood  out 
clearly  as  the  answer  to  all  vague  and  restless  ques- 
tionings:   GOD  IS  LOVE!' 

'God  is  Love!' 

'Prepare  to  Meet  thy  God!' 

How  could  he,  with  his  old  hate  in  his  heart, 
stand  in  the  presence  of  a  God  of  Love? 

Standing  there  bareheaded,  with  one  foot  on  the 
prone  tombstone,  Rodney  grappled  with  the  passion 
that  he  had  cherished  through  the  years,  and  thus 
took  his  first  step  along  the  path  of  preparation. 

'I  forgive  the  woman  who  came  between  us,'  he 
said  aloud.  'My  God,  I  forgive  her — as  I  hope  to 
be  forgiven !' 

'As  soon  as  a  man  comes  to  understand  that 
GOD  IS  love;  said  Dr.  Chalmers,  'he  is  infallibly 
converted.'  That  being  so,  Rodney  Steele  was  in- 
fallibly converted  that  day,  and  that  day  he  entered 
into  peace. 


124  A  Handful  of  Stars 

VII 

When  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  settled  at  Samoa, 
the  islands  were  ablaze  with  tumult  and  strife.  And, 
during  those  years  of  bitterness,  Stevenson  did  his 
utmost  to  bring  the  painful  struggle  to  an  end.  He 
visited  the  chiefs  in  prison,  lavished  his  kindnesses 
upon  the  islanders,  and  made  himself  the  friend  of 
all.  In  the  course  of  time  the  natives  became  de- 
votedly attached  to  the  frail  and  delicate  foreigner 
who  looked  as  though  the  first  gust  of  wind  would 
blow  him  away.  His  health  required  that  he  should 
live  away  on  the  hill-top,  and  they  pitied  him  as  he 
painfully  toiled  up  the  stony  slope.  To  show  their 
affection  for  him,  they  built  a  road  right  up  to  his 
house,  in  order  to  make  the  steep  ascent  more  easy. 
And  they  called  that  road  Ala  Loto  Alofa — The 
Road  to  the  Loving  Heart.  They  felt,  as  they  toiled 
at  their  labor  of  gratitude,  that  they  were  not  only 
conferring  a  boon  on  the  white  man,  but  that  they 
were  making  a  beaten  path  from  their  own  doors 
to  the  heart  that  loved  them  all. 

God  is  Love;  and  it  is  the  glory  of  the  everlasting 
Gospel  that  it  points  the  road  by  which  the  Father's 
wayward  sons — in  whichever  of  the  far  countries 
they  may  have  wandered — may  find  a  way  back  to 
the  Father's  house,  and  home  to  the  Loving  Heart. 


XI 
THOMAS  HUXLEY'S  TEXT 


She  was  a  sermon-taster  and  was  extremely  sensi- 
tive to  any  kind  of  heresy.  It  is  in  his  Life  of 
Donald  John  Martin,  a  Presbyterian  minister,  that 
the  Rev.  Norman  C.  Macfarlane  places  her  notable 
achievement  on  permanent  record.  He  describes  her 
as  *a  stern  lady  who  was  provokingly  evangelical.' 
There  came  to  the  pulpit  one  Sabbath  a  minister 
whose  soundness  she  doubted.  He  gave  out  as  his 
text  the  words:  'What  doth  the  Lord  require  of 
thee  hut  to  do  justly,  to  love  mercy,  and  to  walk 
humbly  with  thy  God?'  'Weel,  we  el,'  this  excellent 
woman  exclaimed,  as  she  turned  to  her  friend  beside 
her,  'weel,  weel,  if  there's  one  text  in  a'  the  Buik 
waur  than  anither,  yon  man  is  sure  to  tak'  it!' 

II 

She  thought  that  text  the  worst  in  the  Bible. 
Huxley  thought  it  the  best.  Huxley  was,  as  every- 
body knows,  the  Prince  of  Agnostics.  We  need  not 
stop  to  ask  why.  Nobody  who  has  read  the  story 
of  John  Stuart  Mill's  boyhood  will  wonder  that  Mill 
was  a  skeptic.    And  nobody  who  has  read  the  story 

125 


126  A  Handful  of  Stars 

of  Thomas  Huxley's  boyhood  will  wonder  at  his 
becoming  an  agnostic.  As  Edward  Clodd,  his  biog- 
rapher, says,  'his  boyhood  was  a  cheerless  time.  Re- 
versing Matthew  Arnold's  sunnier  memories : 

No  rigorous  teachers  seized  his  youth. 
And  purged  its  faith  and  tried  its  fire. 
Shewed  him  the  high,  white  star  of  truth. 
There  bade  him  gaze,  and  there  aspire. 

*He  told  Charles  Kingsley  that  he  was  "kicked 
into  the  world,  a  boy  without  guide  or  training,  or 
with  worse  than  none";  he  "had  two  years  of  a 
pandemonium  of  a  school,  and,  after  that,  neither 
help  nor  sympathy  in  any  intellectual  direction  till 
he  reached  manhood."  '  And,  even  then,  as  those 
familiar  with  his  biography  know,  he  had  little 
enough. 

What  would  Huxley  have  been,  I  wonder,  if  the 
sympathy  for  which  he  hungered  had  been  ex- 
tended to  him?  If,  instead  of  badgering  him  with 
arguments  and  entangling  him  in  controversy,  Mr. 
Gladstone  and  Bishop  Wilberforce  and  others  had 
honestly  attempted  to  see  things  through  his  spec- 
tacles! Huxley  was  said  to  be  as  cold  as  ice  and 
as  inflexible  as  steel;  but  I  doubt  it.  In  his  life- 
story  I  find  two  incidents — one  belonging  to  his 
early  manhood  and  one  belonging  to  his  age — 
which  tell  a  very  different  tale. 

The  first  is  connected  with  the  birth  of  his  boy. 
It  is  the  last  night  of  the  Old  Year,  and  he  is  wait- 


Thomas  Huxley's  Text  127 

ing  to  hear  that  he  is  a  father.  He  spends  the 
anxious  hour  in  framing  a  resolution.  In  his  diary 
he  pledges  himself  'to  smite  all  humbugs,  however 
big;  to  give  a  nobler  tone  to  science;  to  set  an  ex- 
ample of  abstinence  from  petty  personal  controver- 
sies and  of  toleration  for  everything  but  lying;  to 
be  indifferent  as  to  whether  the  work  is  recognized 
as  mine  or  not,  so  long  as  it  is  done.  It  is  half-past 
ten  at  night.  Waiting  for  my  child.  I  seem  to  fancy 
it  the  pledge  that  all  these  things  shall  be.'  And  the 
next  entry  runs : 

'New  Yea/s  Day,  1859.  Born  five  minutes  before 
twelve.    Thank  God!' 

Mark  that  'Thank  God!'  and  then  note  what  fol- 
lows. A  year  or  two  later,  when  the  child  is 
snatched  from  him,  he  makes  this  entry  and  then 
closes  the  journal  for  ever.  He  has  no  heart  to 
keep  a  diary  afterwards. 

*Our  Noel,  our  firstborn,  after  being  for  nearly 
four  years  our  delight  and  our  joy,  was  carried  off 
by  scarlet  fever  in  forty-eight  hours.  This  day  week 
he  and  I  had  a  great  romp  together.  On  Friday  his 
restless  head,  with  its  bright  blue  eyes  and  tangled 
golden  hair,  tossed  all  day  upon  the  pillow.  On 
Saturday  night  I  carried  his  cold,  still  body  here 
into  my  study.  Here,  too,  on  Sunday  night,  came 
his  mother  and  I  to  that  holy  leavetaking.  My  boy 
is  gone;  but  in  a  higher  and  better  sense  than  was 
in  my  mind  when,  four  years  ago,  I  wrote  what 
stands  above,  I  feel  that  my  fancy  has  been  fulfilled. 


128  A  Handful  of  Stars 

I  say  heartily  and  without  bitterness — ^Amen,  so 
let  it  be !' 

'Thank  God!'  exclaims  our  great  Agnostic  when 
the  child  is  born. 

'Amen!'  he  says,  submissively,  when  the  little  one 
is  buried. 

This  is  the  first  of  the  two  incidents.  The  second 
— which  is  no  less  pathetic — is  recorded  by  Dr. 
Douglas  Adam.  *A  friend  of  mine,'  the  doctor  says, 
'was  acting  on  a  Royal  Commission  of  which  Pro- 
fessor Huxley  was  a  member,  and  one  Sunday  they 
were  staying  together  in  a  little  country  town.  'T 
suppose  you  are  going  to  church,"  said  Huxley. 
"Yes,"  replied  my  friend.  "What  if,  instead,  you 
stayed  at  home  and  talked  to  me  of  religion?"  "No," 
was  the  reply,  "for  I  am  not  clever  enough  to  refute 
your  arguments."  "But  what  if  you  simply  told  me 
your  own  experience — what  religion  has  done  for 
you?"  My  friend  did  not  go  to  church  that  morn- 
ing; he  stayed  at  home  and  told  Huxley  the  story 
of  all  that  Christ  had  been  to  him;  and  presently 
there  were  tears  in  the  eyes  of  the  great  agnostic 
as  he  said,  "/  would  give  my  right  hand  if  I  could 
believe  that!" ' 

This,  if  you  please,  is  the  man  who  was  supposed 
to  be  as  cold  as  ice  and  as  inflexible  as  steel !  This 
is  the  man  for  whom  the  Christians  of  his  time  had 
nothing  better  than  harsh  judgments,  freezing  sar- 
casms and  windy  arguments!  How  little  we  know 
of  each  other!    How  slow  we  are  to  understand! 


Thomas  Huxley's  Text  129 

III 

But  the  text !  It  was  in  the  course  of  his  famous 
— and  furious — controversy  with  Mr.  Gladstone 
that  Huxley  paid  his  homage  to  the  text.  He  was 
pleading  for  a  better  understanding  between  Re- 
ligion and  Science. 

'The  antagonism  between  the  two,'  he  said,  'ap- 
pears to  me  to  be  purely  fictitious.  It  is  fabricated, 
on  the  one  hand,  by  short-sighted  religious  people, 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  by  short-sighted  scientific 
people.'  And  he  declared  that,  whatever  differences 
may  arise  between  the  exponents  of  Nature  and  the 
exponents  of  the  Bible,  there  can  never  be  any  real 
antagonism  between  Science  and  Religion  them- 
selves. 'In  the  eighth  century  before  Christ,'  he 
goes  on  to  say,  'in  the  eighth  century  before  Christ, 
in  the  heart  of  a  world  of  idolatrous  polytheists,  the 
Hebrew  prophets  put  forth  a  conception  of  religion 
which  appears  to  me  to  be  as  wonderful  an  inspira- 
tion of  genius  as  the  art  of  Pheidias  or  the  science 
of  Aristotle.  "What  doth  the  Lord  require  of  thee 
but  to  do  justly  and  to  love  mercy  and  to  walk  hum- 
bly with  thy  God?"  If  any  so-called  religion  takes 
away  from  this  great  saying  of  Micah,  I  think  it 
wantonly  mutilates,  while  if  it  adds  thereto,  I  think 
it  obscures,  the  perfect  ideal  of  religion.' 

And  it  was  on  the  ground  of  their  common  ad- 
miration for  this  text — the  worst  text  in  the  world, 
the  best  text  in  the  world — that  Mr.  Gladstone  and 


I30  A  Handful  of  Stars 

Professor  Huxley  reached  some  kind  of  agreement. 
Not  to  be  outdone  by  his  antagonist,  Mr.  Gladstone 
raised  his  hat  to  the  text. 

'I  will  not  dispute,'  he  says,  'that  in  these  words 
is  contained  the  true  ideal  of  discipline  and  attain- 
ment. Still,  I  cannot  help  being  §truck  with  an 
impression  that  Mr.  Huxley  appears  to  cite  these 
terms  of  Micah  as  if  they  reduced  the  work  of  re- 
ligion from  a  difficult  to  an  easy  program.  But 
look  at  them  again.  Examine  them  well.  They  are, 
in  truth,  in  Cowper's  words: 

Higher  than  the  heights  above, 
Deeper  than  the  depths  beneath. 

Do  justly,  that  is  to  say,  extinguish  self;  love  mercy, 
cut  utterly  away  all  the  pride  and  wrath  and  all  the 
cupidity  that  make  this  fair  world  a  wilderness; 
walk  humbly  with  thy  God,  take  his  will  and  set  it 
in  the  place  where  thine  own  was  wont  to  rule. 
Pluck  down  the  tyrant  from  his  place ;  set  up  the  true 
Master  on  His  lawful  throne.'  In  the  text — the 
worst  text  in  the  Bible ;  the  best  text  in  the  Bible — 
Mr.  Gladstone  and  Professor  Huxley  find  a  trysting- 
place.  We  may  therefore  leave  the  argument  at 
that  point. 

IV 

The  words  with  which  Huxley  fell  in  love  were 
addressed  by  the  prophet  to  a  desperate  man — and 


Thomas  Huxley's  Text  131 

that  man  a  king — who  was  prepared  to  pay  any 
price  and  make  any  sacrifice  if  only,  by  so  doing, 
he  might  win  for  himself  the  favor  of  the  Most 
High.  'Wherewith  shall  I  come  before  the  Lord 
and  how  myself  before  the  high  God?'  he  cries. 
*Shall  I  come  before  Him  with  burnt  offerings,  with 
calves  a  year  old?  Will  the  Lord  he  pleased  with 
thousands  of  rams  or  with  ten  thousands  of  rivers 
of  oil?  Shall  I  give  my  firstborn  for  my  transgres- 
sion, the  fruit  of  my  body  for  the  sin  of  my  soul?' 

*My  firstborn!' — we  have  just  witnessed  a  father's 
anguish  on  the  death  of  his  firstborn.  But  Balak, 
King  of  Moab,  is  prepared  to  lead  his  firstborn  to 
the  sacrificial  altar  if,  by  so  doing,  he  can  secure  the 
favor  of  the  Highest. 

And  the  answer  of  the  prophet  is  that  the  love  of 
God  is  not  for  sale.  And,  if  it  were  for  sale,  it 
could  not  be  purchased  by  an  act  of  immolation  in 
which  heaven  could  find  no  pleasure  at  all.  F.  D. 
Maurice  points  out,  in  one  of  his  letters  to  R.  H. 
Hutton,  that  the  world  has  cherished  two  ideas  of 
sacrifice.  When  a  man  discovers  that  his  life  is 
out  of  harmony  with  the  divine  Will,  he  may  make 
a  sacrifice  by  which  he  brings  his  conduct  into  line 
with  the  heavenly  ideal.  That  is  the  one  view.  The 
other  is  Balak's.  Balak  hopes,  by  offering  his  child 
upon  the  altar,  to  bring  the  divine  pleasure  into  line 
with  his  unaltered  life.  'All  light  is  in  the  one  idea 
of  sacrifice,'  says  Maurice,  'and  all  darkness  in  the 
other.    The  idea  of  sacrifice,  not  as  an  act  of  obedi- 


132  A  Handful  of  Stars 

ence  to  the  divine  will,  but  as  a  means  of  changing 
that  will,  is  the  germ  of  every  dark  superstition.' 

Heaven  is  not  to  be  bought,  the  prophet  told  the 
king.  'He  hath  shewed  thee,  O  man,  what  is  good; 
and  what  does  the  Lord  require  of  thee  hut  to  do 
justly  and  to  love  mercy  and  to  walk  humbly  with 
thy  Godf 

Equity !    Charity !    Pie  ty ! 

Do  something!    Love  something!    Be  something! 

Do  justly!  Love  mercy!  Walk  humbly  with 
thy  God! 

These,  and  these  alone,  are  the  offerings  in  which 
heaven  finds  delight. 

V 

I  cannot  help  feeling  sorry  for  the  lady  in  the 
Scottish  church.  She  thinks  that  Balaam's  brave 
reply  to  Balak  is  the  worst  text  in  the  Bible.  And 
she  is  not  alone.  For,  in  his  Literature  and  Dogma, 
Matthew  Arnold  shows  that  she  is  the  representa- 
tive of  a  numerous  and  powerful  class.  'In  our 
railway  stations  are  hung  up,'  Matthew  Arnold 
says,  'sheets  of  Bible  texts  to  catch  the  eye  of  the 
passer-by.  And  very  profitable  admonitions  to  him 
they  generally  are.  One,  particularly,  we  have  all 
seen.  It  asks  the  prophet  Micah's  question :  Where- 
with shall  I  come  before  the  Lord  and  bow  myself 
before  the  high  God?  And  it  answers  that  ques- 
tion with  one  short  quotation  from  the  New  Testa- 
ment :  With  the  precious  blood  of  Christ.'  Matthew 


Thomas  Huxley's  Text  133 

Arnold  maintains  that  this  is  not  honest.  By  cast- 
ing aside  the  prophet's  answer,  and  substituting  an- 
other, the  people  who  arranged  the  placard  ally 
themselves  with  the  lady  in  the  Scottish  church. 
They  evidently  think  Balaam's  reply  to  Balak  the 
worst  text  in  the  Bible.  But  is  it?  Is  it  good,  is  it 
fair,  is  it  honest  to  strike  out  the  real  answer  and 
to  insert  in  its  place  an  adopted  one?  I  wish  to 
ask  the  lady  in  the  Scottish  church — and  the  people 
who  prepared  the  placard — two  pertinent  questions. 

My  first  question  is  this.  Is  the  deleted  text — 
the  worst  text  in  the  Bible — true?  That  is  ex- 
tremely important.  Does  God  require  that  man 
should  do  justly,  love  mercy  and  walk  humbly  with 
Himself?  Is  it  not  a  fact  that  heaven  does  insist 
on  equity  and  charity  and  piety?  Can  there,  indeed, 
be  any  true  religion  without  these  things?  Do  they 
not  represent  the  irreducible  minimum?  If  this  be 
so,  is  it  not  as  well  for  that  Scottish  minister  to 
preach  on  that  terrible  text,  after  all?  And,  if  this 
be  so,  would  not  the  original  answer  to  the  ques- 
tion be  the  best  answer  for  the  placard? 

My  second  question  is  this.  Even  from  the 
standpoint  of  'a  stern  lady  who  is  provokingly  evan- 
gelical,' is  it  not  well  for  the  minister  to  preach  on 
that  objectionable  text?  The  lady  is  anxious,  and 
commendably  anxious,  that  the  pulpit  of  her  church 
should  sound  forth  the  magnificent  verities  of  the 
Christian  evangel.  But  will  a  man  desire  the  sal- 
vation which  the  New  Testament  reveals  unless  he 


134  A  Handful  of  Stars 

has  first  recognized  his  inability  to  meet  heaven's 
just  demands?  In  a  notable  fragment  of  autobiog- 
raphy, Paul  declares  that,  but  for  the  law,  he  would 
never  have  known  the  meaning  of  sin.  It  was  when 
he  heard  how  much  he  owed  to  the  divine  justice 
that  he  discovered  the  hopelessness  of  his  bank- 
ruptcy. It  was  when  he  listened  to  the  Thou  shalts 
and  the  Thou  shalt  nots  that  he  cried,  'O  wretched 
man  that  I  am :  who  shall  deliver  me  ?'  It  was  Sinai 
that  drove  him  to  Calvary.  The  law,  with  its  stern, 
imperative  demands,  was,  he  says,  the  schoolmaster 
that  led  him  to  Christ.  The  best  way  of  showing 
that  a  stick  is  crooked  is  to  lay  a  straight  one  be- 
side it.  This  being  so,  the  lady  in  the  Scottish 
church,  and  the  compilers  of  Matthew  Arnold's 
placard,  must  consider  whether,  in  the  interests  of 
that  very  evangelism  for  which  they  are  so  justly 
jealous,  they  can  afford  to  supersede  the  stately 
passages  that  make  men  feel  their  desperate  need 
of  a  Saviour. 

This,  at  any  rate,  is  the  way  in  which  Micah 
used  the  story  of  the  conversation  between  Balak 
and  Balaam.  By  means  of  it  he  sought  to  reduce  the 
people  to  despair.  And  then,  when  they  had  fallen 
upon  their  faces  and  covered  themselves  with  sack- 
cloth, he  made  one  of  the  noblest  evangelical  pro- 
nouncements that  the  Old  Testament  contains :  'He 
pardoneth  iniquity  because  He  delighteth  in  mercy: 
Thou  wilt  cast  all  their  sins  into  the  depths  of  the 
sea/    But  the  people  would  never  have  listened  hun- 


Thomas  Huxley's  Text  135 

grily  to  that  glad  golden  word  unless  they  had  first 
realized  the  sublimity  of  the  divine  demand  and  the 
incalculable  extent  of  their  shortcoming. 


VI 

We  each  have  a  blind  spot.  We  see  truth  frag- 
mentarily.  If  only  the  excellent  lady  in  the  Scot- 
tish church  could  have  seen,  in  the  minister's  text, 
what  Huxley  saw  in  it !  But  she  didn't ;  and,  be- 
cause she  was  blind  to  its  beauty,  she  called  it  'the 
worst  text  in  the  Bible!'  And  if  only  Huxley  could 
have  grasped  those  precious  truths  that  were  so  dear 
to  her !  But  he  never  did.  He  could  only  shake  his 
fine  head  sadly  and  say,  'I  do  not  know !'  'I  would 
give  my  right  hand,'  he  exclaims,  'if  I  could  believe 
that!'  Mr.  Clodd  adorns  the  title-page  of  his  Life 
of  Huxley  with  the  words  of  Matthew  Arnold :  'He 
saw  life  steadily  and  saw  it  whole.'  That  sad  shake 
of  the  head,  and  that  passionate  but  melancholy 
exclamation  about  giving  his  right  hand,  prove  that 
the  tribute  is  not  quite  true.  Huxley,  as  he  himself 
more  than  half  suspected,  missed  the  best. 

When  Sir  George  Adam  Smith,  in  his  Book  of 
the  Twelve  Prophets,  comes  to  this  great  passage 
in  Micah,  he  prints  it  in  italics  right  across  the  page : 

What  doth  the  Lord  require  of  thee  hut  to  do 
justly  and  to  love  mercy  and  to  walk  humbly  with 
thy  God? 

This,  says  Sir  George,  is  the  greatest  saying  of 


136  A  Handful  of  Stars 

the  Old  Testament;  and  there  is  only  one  other  in 
the  New  which  excels  it : 

Come  unto  Me,  all  ye  that  labor  and  are  heavy 
laden,  and  I  will  give  you  rest. 

Huxley  had  eyes  for  the  first,  but  none  for  the 
second;  the  Scottish  lady  had  eyes  for  the  second, 
but  none  for  the  first;  but  they  who  'see  life  steadily 
and  see  it  whole'  will  stand  up  to  salute  the  majesty 
of  both. 

VII 

It  is  customary  for  the  Presidents  of  the  United 
States  to  select  the  passage  which  they  shall  kiss 
in  taking  the  oath  on  assuming  the  responsibilities 
of  their  great  office.  President  Harding  had  no 
hesitation  in  making  his  choice.  He  turned  to  this 
great  saying  of  Micah.  'What  doth  the  Lord  re- 
quire of  thee  hut  to  do  justly  and  to  love  mercy  and 
to  walk  humbly  with  thy  Godf  The  lady  in  the  Scot- 
tish church  would  frown  and  shake  her  head,  but 
the  President  felt  that,  of  all  the  texts  in  the  Bible, 
that  was  the  best. 


XII 
WALTER  PETHERICK'S  TEXT 


He  was  born  at  Islington  on  the  day  on  which  Sir 
Walter  Raleigh  was  executed ;  and  his  father  named 
him  after  the  gallant  knight  whom  he  himself  was 
so  proud  of  having  served.  That  was  forty-seven 
years  ago.  He  is  now  a  prosperous  London  mer- 
chant, living,  at  ordinary  times,  over  his  warehouse, 
and  delighting  in  the  society  of  his  four  motherless 
children.  At  ordinary  times!  But  these  are  not 
ordinary  times.  The  plague  is  in  the  city!  It  ap- 
peared for  the  first  time  about  two  months  ago  and 
has  gradually  increased  in  virulence  ever  since.  Mr. 
Petherick  has  therefore  withdrawn  with  his  two 
boys  and  his  two  girls  to  Twickenham.  This  morn- 
ing— the  morning  of  July  i6,  1665 — they  all  go 
together  to  the  Parish  Church.  The  riverside  is  in 
all  its  summer  glory.  The  brilliant  sunshine  seems 
to  mock  both  the  wretchedness  so  near  at  hand  and 
the  heavy  anxiety  that  weighs  upon  their  hearts. 
During  the  week  a  solemn  fast-day  has  been  ob- 
served, and  to-day,  services  of  humiliation  and  inter- 
cession are  to  be  held  in  all  the  churches.  Several 
times,  during  the  past  week  or  two,  Mr.  Petherick 

137 


138  A  Handful  of  Stars 

has  visited  the  city.  It  was  a  melancholy  experience. 
Most  of  the  shops  were  shut;  poor  creatures  who 
claimed  that  they  themselves  or  their  relatives  were 
infected  by  the  pestilence  cried  for  alms  at  every 
corner;  and  he  had  passed  many  houses  on  whose 
doors  a  red  cross  had  been  marked,  and,  underneath, 
the  words,  'Lord,  have  mercy  upon  us!'  To-day 
that  pathetic  entreaty  is  to  be  offered  in  every  sanc- 
tuary. All  through  the  country,  men  and  women 
are  pleading  that  the  awful  visitation  may  be  stayed. 
At  Twickenham  the  church  soon  fills,  and  the  fer- 
vently murmured  responses  give  evidence  of  the 
depth  and  intensity  of  the  universal  emotion.  Mr. 
Petherick  never  forgot  the  sermon  that  was  preached 
in  the  old  church  that  July  morning.  At  least,  he 
never  forgot  the  text.  'Although  the  fig  tree  shall 
not  blossom,  neither  shall  fruit  be  in  the  vines;  the 
labor  of  the  olive  shall  fail,  and  the  fields  shall  yield 
no  meat;  the  flocks  shall  be  cut  off  from  the  fold, 
and  there  shall  be  no  herd  in  the  stalls;  yet  I  will  re- 
joice in  the  Lord  and  I  will  joy  in  the  God  of  my 
salvation!' 

The  fields  barren!  The  stalls  empty!  The  vine- 
yards bare! 

I  will  rejoice!  I  will  joy!  I  will  joy!  I  will  re- 
joice! 

The  text  reminded  the  Pethericks  of  the  dazzling 
sunshine  that,  as  they  came  along,  had  seemed  so 
unsympathetic.  For  here  was  a  radiance  equally  in- 
congruous!   Here  was  faith  shining  like  a  solitary 


Walter  Petherick's  Text  139 

star  on  a  dark  night !  Here  was  joy,  singing  her 
song,  like  the  nightingale,  amidst  the  deepest  gloom ! 
It  was  as  though  a  merry  peal  of  bells  was  being 
rung  on  a  day  of  public  lamentation. 


II 

'The  words  took  hold  upon  me  mightily!'  wrote 
Walter  Petherick  to  a  friend  in  1682.  I  do  not 
wonder.  Quite  apart  from  their  singular  applica- 
tion to  his  own  case,  they  are  full  of  nobility  and 
grandeur.  When,  in  1782 — exactly  a  century  later 
— Benjamin  Franklin  was  appointed  American 
Plenipotentiary  at  Paris,  some  of  the  brilliant 
French  wits  of  that  period  twitted  him  on  his  ad- 
miration for  the  Bible.  He  determined  to  test 
their  knowledge  of  the  Volume  they  professed  to 
scorn.  Entering  their  company  one  evening,  he 
told  them  that  he  had  been  reading  an  ancient  poem, 
and  that  its  stately  beauty  had  greatly  impressed 
him.  At  their  request  he  took  from  his  pocket  a 
manuscript  and  proceeded  to  read  it.  It  was  re- 
ceived with  exclamations  of  extravagant  admira- 
tion. 'Superb!'  they  cried.  'Who  was  the  author? 
Where  did  Franklin  discover  it?  How  could  copies 
be  obtained?'  He  informed  them,  to  their  aston- 
ishment, that  it  was  the  third  chapter  of  the 
prophecy  of  Habakkuk — the  passage  to  which  Mr. 
Petherick  and  his  children  listened  that  sad  but 
sunny  morning  at  Twickenham. 


I40  A  Handful  of  Stars 

The  Petherick  incident  belongs  to  the  seventeenth 
century;  the  Franklin  incident  belongs  to  the  eigh- 
teenth; and  they  remind  me  of  one  that  belongs  to 
the  nineteenth.  Daniel  Webster  was  one  morning 
discussing  with  a  number  of  eminent  artists  the  sub- 
jects commonly  chosen  for  portrayal  upon  canvas. 
*I  have  often  wondered,'  he  said,  'that  no  painter 
has  yet  thought  it  worth  his  while  to  draw  his  in- 
spiration from  one  of  the  most  sublime  passages  in 
any  literature.'  'And  what  is  that?'  they  asked. 
'Well,'  he  replied,  'what  finer  conception  for  a  mas- 
terpiece could  any  artist  desire  than  the  picture  of 
the  prophet  Habakkuk  sitting  in  the  midst  of  utter 
ruin  and  desolation,  singing,  in  spite  of  everything, 
faith's  joyous  and  triumphant  song?' 

Ill 

Suppose! 

It  is  a  Song  of  Suppositions! 
'Suppose  the  fig  tree  shall  not  blossom!* 
'Suppose  the  vine  shall  bear  no  fruit !' 
'Suppose  the  labor  of  the  olive  shall  fail!' 
'Suppose  the  fields  shall  yield  no  corn !' 
'Suppose  the  flock  shall  be  cut  off  from  the  fold  I' 
'Suppose  there  shall  be  no  herd  in  the  stalls!' 
'Suppose!     Suppose!     Suppose!' 
I  very  well  remember  a  conversation  I  once  had 
at  Mosgiel  with  old  Jeanie  McNab.     Jeanie  sub- 
sisted on  a  mixed  diet  of  smiles  and  songs. 


Walter  Petherick's  Text  141 

*But,  supposing,  Jeanie — '  I  began  one  day. 

'Now  don't  you  have  anything  to  do  with  sup- 
posings/  she  exclaimed.  *I  know  them  all.  "Sup- 
pose I  should  lose  my  money!"  "Suppose  I  should 
lose  my  health!"  And  all  the  rest.  When  those 
supposings  come  knocking  at  your  heart,  you  just 
slam  the  door,  and  bolt  it,  and  don't  let  any  of 
them  in!' 

It  was  excellent  advice;  yet  the  prophet  acted  on 
a  diametrically  opposite  principle.  When  the  sup- 
posings came  knocking  at  his  door,  he  cried  'Come 
in!'  and  in  they  came! 

'Suppose  the  figs  are  barren!' 

'Suppose  the  vines  wither!' 

'Suppose  the  olive  fail!' 

'Suppose  the  corn  perish !' 

'Suppose  the  sheep  starve!' 

'Suppose  the  cattle  die!' 

The  prophet  invites  them  all  to  come  in.  They 
jostle  each  other  as  they  throng  his  little  room.  He 
hears  all  that  they  have  to  say,  and  then  he  answers 
them. 

'Whence  came  all  these  things?'  he  demands. 
'Whence  came  the  figs  and  the  vines  and  the 
olives,  the  corn  and  the  flocks  and  the  herds  ?'  And, 
having  asked  this  question,  he  himself  proceeds  to 
answer  it. 

'HE  gave  them!'  he  cries  triumphantly,  'HE 
gave  them!  And  if  they  perish,  as  you  suppose,  He 
can  as  easily  replace  them !    Therefore  will  I  rejoice 


142  A  Handful  of  Stars 

in  the  Lord  and  will  joy  in  the  God  of  my  salvation! 
It  is  a  small  thing  to  lose  the  gifts  as  long  as  you 
possess  the  Giver;  the  supreme  tragedy  lies  in  losing 
the  Giver  and  retaining  only  the  gifts!' 

There  is  no  record  as  to  what  the  preacher  said 
that  Sunday  morning  at  Twickenham;  but  some 
such  thoughts  as  these  must  have  been  suggested  to 
the  eager  minds  of  the  Pethericks  as  they  listened 
so  attentively.  'The  words  took  hold  upon  me 
mightily!'  the  father  confessed,  in  a  letter  to  a 
friend,  long  afterwards. 

IV 

That  evening  a  horror  of  great  darkness  fell  upon 
the  soul  of  Walter  Petherick.  He  spent  the  sunset 
hours  quietly  with  the  young  people,  and,  before 
they  bade  each  other  good-night,  he  read  with  them 
again  the  passage  that  had  so  impressed  them  in 
the  morning.  Then,  left  to  himself,  Mr.  Petherick 
put  on  his  hat  and  took  a  stroll  in  the  lane.  It  was 
a  perfect  summer's  evening,  warm  and  star-lit;  yet 
its  peace  failed  to  penetrate  his  tortured  soul.  A 
glow-worm  twinkled  in  the  grass  under  the  hedge, 
but  no  ray  of  light  pierced  the  impenetrable  gloom 
within.  He  returned  to  his  room,  and,  after  sitting 
for  a  while  at  the  open  window,  looking  down  on 
the  sluggish  waters  of  the  tranquil  river,  he  threw 
himself  on  his  knees  beside  his  bed.  One  by  one  he 
prayed  for  each  of  his  children.    The  red  cross  that 


Walter  Petherick's  Text  143 

he  had  seen  on  so  many  doors  seemed  to  have 
stamped  itself  upon  the  retina  of  his  eye;  it  blazed 
before  him  even  whilst  the  lids  were  closed  in 
prayer. 

'Lord,  have  mercy  on  us !'  said  the  legend  under 
the  cross. 

*Lord,  have  mercy  on  us!'  cried  Mr.  Petherick 
over  and  over  and  over  again. 

He  thought  of  the  morning's  text,  but  it  only 
mocked  him,  as  the  sunshine  mocked  him  on  his 
way  to  church. 

*I  could  not  say  it,'  he  moaned.  *If  my  children 
were  snatched  from  me — my  fine  boys  and  my  lovely 
girls — the  treasures  that  she  left  me — how  could  I 
rejoice  in  the  Lord  and  joy  in  the  God  of  my  sal- 
vation?' 

He  broke  into  a  fresh  outburst  of  supplication. 
Again  he  mentioned  each  of  his  children  by  name. 
'Spare  him;  oh,  spare  him!'  he  cried;  and,  as  he 
thought  of  the  girls,  'Spare  her,  O  Lord;  have  pity, 
I  beseech  Thee !' 

He  wiped  his  face;  it  was  damp  with  perspiration. 
He  allowed  his  forehead  to  rest  upon  his  folded 
arms;  and  then,  bowed  there  in  the  solitude  of  his 
room  and  in  the  stillness  of  the  summer  night,  a 
strange  thought  took  possession  of  him. 

V 

He  remembered  to  have  prayed  as  fervently  as 


144  A  Handful  of  Stars 

this  before — many,  many  years  ago.  In  those  days 
— the  days  of  his  earliest  religious  experiences — 
he  had  prayed,  almost  as  earnestly  as  this,  for  his 
own  spiritual  prosperity,  for  the  extension  of 
Christ's  Kingdom  and  for  the  enlightenment  of  the 
world.  It  seemed  like  a  dream  as  he  recalled  it. 
He  was  scarcely  more  than  a  boy  in  those  days. 
The  ardor  and  intensity  of  that  distant  time  had 
deserted  him  so  gradually,  and  had  vanished  so 
imperceptibly,  that  he  had  never  missed  it  until 
now.  Love  had  come  into  his  life,  irradiating  and 
transfiguring  everything.  Love  had  led  to  mar- 
riage ;  four  happy  children  had  brought  added  glad- 
ness to  his  home  and  fresh  contentment  to  his  heart ; 
and  he  had  abandoned  himself  without  reserve  to 
these  domestic  cares  and  comforts.  The  things 
that  had  so  completely  captivated  his  soul  were  all 
all  of  them  good  things — just  as  the  fig  and  the  vine 
and  the  olive,  the  corn  and  the  flocks  and  the  herds 
were  all  of  them  good  things — but  he  had  allowed 
them  to  elbow  out  the  wealthiest  things  of  all.  The 
good  had  become  the  enemy  of  the  best.  Before 
his  heart  had  been  gladdened  by  those  treasures 
that  were  now  so  dear  to  him,  he  had  every  day 
rejoiced  in  the  Lord  and  joyed  in  the  God  of  his 
salvation.  But  not  since!  His  enrichment  had 
proved  his  impoverishment!  What  was  it  that  the 
preacher  had  said?  *It  is  a  small  thing  to  love  the 
gifts  as  long  as  you  possess  the  Giver;  the  supreme 
tragedy  lies  in  losing  the  Giver  and  retaining  only 


Walter  Petherick's  Text  145 

the  gifts.'  And  Walter  Petherick  felt  that  night 
that  that  supreme  tragedy  was  his. 

He  rose  from  his  knees,  reached  for  his  Bible, 
and  turned  once  more  to  the  chapter  from  which 
the  minister  had  preached.  'O  Lord,'  it  began, 
'revive  Thy  work  in  the  midst  of  years!'  He  him- 
self was  'in  the  midst  of  years.'  The  thought 
brought  with  it  a  sense  of  shame  and  a  rush  of 
thankfulness.  He  was  ashamed  that  he  had  per- 
mitted the  years  that  had  gone  to  filch  so  much 
from  him.  Like  waves  that  strew  treasures  on  the 
shore,  and  snatch  treasures  from  the  shore,  he  felt 
that  the  years  had  brought  much  and  taken  much. 
Yet  he  felt  grateful  that  he  was  still  'in  the  midst  of 
the  years' ;  it  is  better  to  discover  life's  loss  at  the 
halfway  house  than  to  find  it  out  at  the  end  of  the 
journey!  He  returned  the  Bible  to  its  place,  and, 
as  he  did  so,  he  closed  his  eyes  and  repeated  for 
himself  the  prophet's  prayer, 

'O  Lord'  he  cried,  'revive  Thy  work  in  the  midst 
of  the  years;  in  the  midst  of  the  years  make  known; 
in  wrath  remember  mercy!' 

It  seemed  as  if  the  prayer  had  opened  the  gates 
of  his  soul  to  the  peace  of  the  night.  As  he  looked 
again  at  the  glistening  river,  he  felt  strangely 
soothed  and  comforted.  And,  half  an  hour  later, 
he  was  sleeping  as  rest  fully  as  any  of  his  children. 

VI 

Once  more  it  is  a  Sunday  evening,  and  once  more 


146  A  Handful  of  Stars 

we  are  at  Twickenham.  For  at  Twickenham  the 
family  have  now  made  their  home;  they  never, 
after  the  Plague  Year,  resided  in  the  city.  More 
than  twelve  months  have  passed.  We  last  saw 
them  on  July  i6,  1665 ;  this  is  Sunday,  September  2, 
1666.  And  this  Sunday  has  been  as  eventful  and 
as  memorable  as  that.  For,  just  as  the  family  were 
assembling  at  the  breakfast  table,  Henry,  the  elder 
of  the  two  boys,  burst  into  the  room,  exclaiming 
excitedly : 

'Father,  the  city  is  on  fire !' 

It  was  true !  London  was  one  great  sea  of  flame ! 
In  the  afternoon  the  father  and  the  two  sons  drove 
as  far  as  the  Borough ;  it  was  as  near  as  they  could 
get  to  the  raging  conflagration.  And  what  a  sight 
confronted  them !  Immense  tongues  of  crimson  shot 
up  from  the  burning  city  and  seemed  to  lick  the  very 
skies.  When  the  clouds  of  smoke  parted  for  a 
moment,  they  saw  towers  falling,  walls  collapsing, 
chimneys  tottering,  whilst  the  crash  of  roof  after 
roof  kept  up  a  series  of  reports  that  resembled  the 
firing  of  artillery.  Every  now  and  again  a  ter- 
rific explosion  rent  the  air,  followed  immediately 
by  an  eruption  of  flaming  debris  that  looked  vol- 
canic in  its  weird  grandeur.  London  seemed  to  be 
in  the  grip  of  an  angry  demon  that  was  bent  on 
tearing  it  to  fragments.  The  fire  exhibited  a  thou- 
sand fantastic  forms ;  it  blazed  in  every  conceivable 
hue  and  color ;  it  roared  and  shrieked  and  sputtered ; 
it  hissed  and  thundered  and  growled.    A  spectacle 


Walter  Petherick's  Text  147 

of  such  vivid  beauty,  yet  of  such  awful  horror,  had 
never  been  seen  in  England  before.  And,  some- 
where within  the  area  swept  by  that  red,  red  ocean 
of  flame,  was  Mr.  Petherick's  warehouse  contain- 
ing all,  or  practically  all,  his  earthly  possessions ! 

But  that  Sunday  night  the  soul  of  Walter  Peth- 
erick  knew  no  such  anguish  as  it  had  known  a  year 
ago.  He  thought  of  the  'supposes.'  He  read  once 
more  the  prophet's  song  of  defiance  and  of  triumph. 
He  smiled  to  himself  as  he  reflected  that  the  flames 
could  only  take  the  gifts;  they  could  not  rob  him 
of  the  Giver.  'Therefore'  he  said  to  himself,  7  will 
rejoice  in  the  Lord  and  joy  in  the  God  of  my  salva- 
tion';  for  'it  is  a  small  thing  to  lose  the  gifts  as  long 
as  you  possess  the  Giver;  the  supreme  tragedy  lies 
in  losing  the  Giver  and  retaining  only  the  gifts!' 
And  that  Sunday  night,  whilst  London  crackled  and 
blazed,  the  sleep  of  Walter  Petherick  was  once  more 
like  the  sleep  of  a  little  child. 

vn 

Again  it  is  a  Sunday  evening  at  Twickenham. 
Walter  Petherick  has  been  celebrating  his  fiftieth 
birthday.  Three  years  have  passed  since  the  Great 
Plague  and  two  since  the  Great  Fire.  In  the  pres- 
ence of  the  young  people,  he  has  poured  out  his 
heart  in  reverent  gratitude  for  the  mercies  that 
have  so  richly  crowned  his  days.  And  now,  the  soft 
autumn  day,  with  its  russet  tints  and  its  misty  sun- 


I4S  A  Handful  of  Stars 

light,  having  closed,  he  is  once  more  alone  in  his 
room. 

*0  Lord,'  he  prays,  *Thou  hast  been  pleased  by 
pestilence  and  by  fire  to  redeem  my  soul  from  de- 
struction. Thou  didst  threaten  me  with  the  loss 
of  Thy  choicest  gifts  that  I  might  set  my  heart's 
affections  once  more  upon  their  Giver.  But  the  fig 
tree  did  not  wither;  the  vines  did  not  perish;  the 
olive  did  not  fail.  The  pestilence  did  not  touch 
my  children;  the  flames  did  not  destroy  my  goods. 
Accept  the  thanks  of  Thy  servant  this  day  and 
help  him,  all  his  days,  to  rejoice  in  the  Lord  and  to 
joy  in  the  God  of  his  salvation.' 

And  the  records  show  that  Walter  Petherick  lived 
to  enjoy  long  life,  abounding  wealth,  great  honors, 
and  the  clinging  affection  of  his  children's  children. 
And  ever  in  his  heart  he  cherished  a  deep,  deep  se- 
cret and  sang  a  rapturous  song.  For  he  reveled, 
not  only  in  the  gifts,  but  in  the  Giver.  He  rejoiced 
in  the  Lord  and  joyed  in  the  God  of  his  salvation. 


XIII 
DOCTOR  BLUND'S  TEXT 


The  doctor  was  the  worst  man  in  Bartown,  and 
that  was  saying  a  good  deal.  For  Bartown  had  the 
reputation  of  being  'the  wickedest  Httle  hole  in  all 
England.'  It  is  Harold  Begbie  who,  in  The  Vigils 
tells  its  story.  Dr.  Blund,  he  assures  us,  spent  most 
of  his  time  drinking  gin  and  playing  billiards  at 
'The  Angel.'  In  a  professional  point  of  view,  only 
one  person  in  the  little  seaside  town  believed  in  him, 
and  that  was  the  broken  and  bedraggled  little  woman 
whose  whole  life  had  been  darkened  by  his  de- 
bauchery. Mrs.  Blund  was  never  tired  of  singing 
the  doctor's  praises.  When  she  introduced  him  to 
a  newcomer,  and  told  of  his  wondrous  cures  and 
amazing  skill,  he  listened  like  a  man  in  a  dream. 
*Dr.  Blund,' — so  runs  the  story — 'Dr.  Blund  was 
twitching  with  excess  of  alcohol,  and  only  muttered 
and  frowned  as  his  wife  talked  of  his  powers.  The 
terrible  old  doctor,  with  his  hairy,  purple  face  and 
his  sunken  eyes,  seemed  to  think  that  his  wife  was 
doing  him  the  most  dreadful  dis-service.  It  was 
wonderful  that  this  little  woman,  instead  of  shrink- 
ing from  exhibiting  her  husband,  should  have  so 
pathetic  a  faith  in  the  dreadful-looking  rogue  that 

149 


I50  A  Handful  of  Stars 

she  evidently  fancied  that  he  had  but  to  be  seen  to 
be  chosen  as  medical  adviser.' 

Thus  the  story  opens.  It  could  scarcely  be  ex- 
pected that  such  a  wreck  could  hold  together  for 
long.  Exactly  half-way  through  the  book  I  find 
Mr.  Rodwell,  the  young  rector,  standing  at  the 
street-corner  talking  to  Mr.  Shorder,  the  wealthy 
manufacturer.  They  are  interrupted.  Mrs.  Blund 
comes  hurrying  breathlessly  round  the  corner. 

*Mr.  Rodwell,'  she  pants,  'please  come  at  once! 
Dr.  Blund !  He's  asking  for  you !  I've  been  to  the 
vicarage,  I've  been  everywhere,  hunting  for  you. 
Don't  delay  a  moment,  please!' 

Richard  Rodwell  was  an  earnest  young  clergy- 
man, who  had  ideas  of  his  own  about  things;  and 
the  task  to  which  he  was  now  summoned  was  very 
little  to  his  taste.  He  saw  in  Blund  a  man  who 
had  lived  hideously  and  was  now  concerned  to  avert 
his  just  punishment.  He  tried  to  believe  that  there 
was  some  hope  for  such  a  wretch;  but  the  attempt 
was  not  altogether  successful.  He  bent  over  the 
dying  man  and  talked  of  mercy  and  repentance  and 
forgiveness.  But  the  words  did  not  come  from  his 
own  soul,  and  they  did  not  comfort  the  soul  of  the 
man  to  whom  they  were  addressed. 

'There's  something  else!'  he  gasped. 

'There  is  nothing  outside  the  mercy  of  God,'  re- 
plied the  vicar. 

'It's  in  the  Bible,  what  I  mean,'  returned  the  dying 
man. 


Doctor  Blund's  Text  151 

'What  is  it?'  asked  Rodwell  scMDthingly. 

'It's  a  text,  "Except  a  man  be  born  again " 


You  know  the  words,  Born  again.    What  does  that 
mean?' 

The  doctor,  in  his  professional  capacity,  had  often 
seen  a  child  draw  its  first  breath,  and  had  been  im- 
pressed by  its  utter  pastlessness.  It  had  nothing 
to  regret,  nothing  to  forget.  Everything  was  before 
it ;  nothing  behind.  And  here  was  a  text  that  seemed 
to  promise  such  an  experience  a'  second  time !  To  be 
born  again!  What  was  it  to  be  born  again f  The 
dying  doctor  asked  his  insistent  question  repeatedly, 
but  the  vicar  was  out  of  his  depth.  He  floundered 
pitifully.  At  last  the  doctor,  to  whom  every  moment 
was  precious  beyond  all  price,  lost  patience  with  the 
hesitating  minister  and  changed  the  form  of  his 
question.  Looking  fixedly  into  his  visitor's  eyes,  he 
exclaimed : 

'Tell  me,  have  you  been  born  again  f  Rodwell 
hung  his  head  in  silence,  and  the  voice  from  the  bed 
went  on. 

'Have  you  ever  known  in  your  life,'  he  asked, 
*a  moment  when  you  felt  that  a  great  change  hap- 
pened to  you?  Are  you  pretending?  Have  you 
ever  been  conscious  of  a  new  birth  in  your  soul  ?' 

The  vicar  fenced  with  the  question,  but  it  was  of 
no  avail.  The  dying  man  raised  himself  suddenly 
on  an  elbow.  'You  can't  help  me !'  he  cried  angrily. 
He  seized  Rodwell's  wrist  and  held  it  tightly, 
fiercely.     As  he  spoke,  the  fingers  tightened  their 


152  A  Handful  of  Stars 

grasp,  and  he  bent  Rodwell's  hand  down  to  the  bed, 
as  it  were  for  emphasis. 

'You  don't  know,'  he  cried.  'You're  pretending. 
The  words  you  say  are  words  for  the  living.  I  am 
a  dying  man.  Have  you  the  same  message  for  the 
living  and  the  dying?  Have  I  a  lifetime  before  me 
in  which  to  work  out  repentance?  You  can't  help 
me !  You  don't  know !  You  have  never  been  born 
again!' 

Such  a  rebuke  smites  a  minister  like  the  sudden 
coming  of  the  Day  of  Judgment.  After  his  con- 
version John  Wesley  wrote  a  terrible  letter  to  his 
old  counselor,  William  Law.  'How  will  you  an- 
swer to  our  common  Lord,'  he  asks,  'that  you,  sir, 
never  led  me  into  light?  Why  did  I  scarcely  ever 
hear  you  name  the  name  of  Christ?  Why  did  you 
never  urge  me  to  faith  in  His  hloodf  I  beseech 
you,  sir,  to  consider  whether  the  true  reason  of  your 
never  pressing  this  salvation  upon  me  was  not  this 
— that  you  never  had  it  yourself!' 

'It  was  a  terrible  discovery  to  make,'  says  Mr. 
Begbie.  'To  think  that  he— Richard  Rodwell, 
Vicar  of  Bartown — knew  so  little  of  the  nature  of 
God  that  he  could  say  no  single  word  that  had  sig- 
nificance for  this  dying  soul !  He  was  dumb.  The 
words  on  his  lips  were  the  words  of  the  Church. 
Out  of  his  own  heart,  out  of  his  own  soul,  out  of 
his  own  experience,  he  could  say  nothing.' 

'Forgive  me,'  he  said,  as  he  bent  over  the  form  on 
the  bed,  'forgive  me  for  failing  you.     It  is  not 


Doctor  Blund's  Text  153 

Christ  who  has  failed;  it  is  I.'  He  turned  to  go. 
The  dying  man  opened  his  eyes  and  looked  at  Rod- 
well  sadly  and  tragically. 

'Try  to  learn  what  those  words  mean,'  he  mut- 
tered. 'Born  again!    It's  the  bad  man's  only  chance.' 

They  parted,  never  to  meet  again;  and  from  an- 
other minister's  lips  the  doctor  learned  the  secret 
for  which  he  craved. 

II 

It  is  very  difficult  to  excuse  Mr,  Rodwell,  es- 
pecially when  we  remember  that  the  words  that  the 
dying  doctor  found  so  captivating,  and  that  he  him- 
self found  so  perplexing,  were  originally  intended 
to  meet  just  such  cases  as  that  of  Dr.  Blund. 

'What  is  it  to  be  born  again?  How  can  a  man 
be  horn  again?'  asked  the  voice  from  the  bed 

'How  can  a  man  he  horn  when  he  is  old?'  asked 
Nicodemus,  as  he  heard  the  Saviour's  words  ut- 
tered for  the  first  time. 

'When  he  is  old!'  To  Nicodemus,  as  to  Dr. 
Blund,  there  was  something  singularly  attractive 
about  the  thought  of  babyhood,  the  thought  of  past- 
lessness,  the  thought  of  beginning  life  all  over  again. 
But  to  the  aged  ruler,  as  to  the  aged  doctor,  it  was 
an  insoluble  enigma,  an  inscrutable  mystery. 

'How?'  asked  Nicodemus  of  the  Saviour.  'How 
can  a  man  be  horn  when  he  is  old?' 

'How?'  asked  Dr.  Blund  of  Mr.  Rodwell.  'How 
can  a  man  be  born  again?' 


X54  A  Handful  of  Stars 

We  all  feel  that,  unless  the  gospel  can  meet  just 
such  cases  as  these,  we  might  almost  as  well  have 
no  gospel  at  all.  And  yet  we  have  also  felt  the 
force  of  that  persistent  and  penetrating  How? 

Dr.  Blund  is  no  frolic  of  Mr.  Begbie's  imagina- 
tion. Dr.  Blund  is  the  representative  of  all  those — 
and  their  name  is  legion — who,  in  the  crisis  of  the 
soul's  secret  history,  have  turned  towards  the 
Saviour's  strange  saying  with  the  most  intense  wist- 
fulness  and  yearning.  Let  me  cite  three  instances 
— each  as  unlike  the  others  as  it  could  possibly  be 
— in  order  to  show  that  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
men  have  at  some  time  felt  as  Dr.  Blund  felt  in 
those  last  hours  of  his.  John  Bunyan,  the  tinker 
of  Bedford,  was  born  in  the  seventeenth  century; 
the  Duke  of  Wellington,  soldier  and  statesman,  was 
born  in  the  eighteenth  century ;  Frederick  Charring- 
ton,  the  London  brewer,  was  born  in  the  nineteenth 
century.  From  a  great  cloud  of  available  witnesses 
I  select  these  three. 

As  to  John  Bunyan,  the  story  of  the  beginnings 
of  grace  in  the  dreamer's  soul  is  familiar  to  us  all, 
but  it  will  do  us  no  harm  to  hear  it  from  his  own 
lips  once  again.  'Upon  a  day,'  he  says,  'the  good 
providence  of  God  called  me  to  Bedford,  to  work 
at  my  calling;  and  in  one  of  the  streets  of  that  town 
I  came  to  where  there  were  three  or  four  poor 
women  sitting  in  the  sun  talking  about  the  things  of 
God ;  and  being  now  willing  to  hear  them  discourse, 
I  drew  near  to  hear  what  they  said;  but  I  heard, 


Doctor  Blund's  Text  155 

yet  understood  not;  they  were  far  above,  out  of 
my  reach;  for  their  talk  was  about  a  new  birth!' 

'Their  talk  zvas  about  a  new  birth!' 

*Ye  must  be  born  again!' 

7  heard,'  says  Bunyan,  'but  I  understood  not!' 

*At  this,'  he  goes  on  to  say,  'at  this  I  felt  my 
heart  begin  to  shake,  for  I  saw  that  in  all  my 
thoughts  about  salvation,  the  new  birth  did  never 
enter  into  my  mind !' 

Thus  the  soul  of  the  sleeper  awoke.  He  walked 
the  streets  of  Bedford  asking  the  old,  old  question, 
the  question  of  Nicodemus,  the  question  of  Dr. 
Blund,  the  question  of  us  all.  'How  can  a  man  be 
born  again?    How  can  a  man  be  born  again?' 

From  John  Bunyan  to  the  Duke  of  Wellington 
seems  a  far  cry.  But  the  transition  may  not  be  as 
drastic  as  it  appears.  Dr.  W.  H.  Fitchett,  who  has 
made  a  special  study  of  the  character  and  achieve- 
ments of  the  great  Duke,  recently  told  the  story  of 
a  remarkable  and  voluminous  correspondence  that 
took  place  between  Wellington  and  a  young  lady 
named  Miss  Jenkins.  To  this  earnest  and  devout 
girl,  her  faith  was  the  biggest  thing  in  life.  She 
had  but  one  passionate  and  quenchless  desire :  the 
desire  to  share  it  with  others.  She  sought  for  con- 
verts everywhere.  A  murderer  awaited  execution 
in  the  local  gaol.  Miss  Jenkins  obtained  permission 
to  visit  him.  She  entered  the  condemned  cell, 
pleaded  with  him,  wept  over  him,  won  him  to  repent- 
ance, and  the  man  went  to  the  scaffold  blessing  her. 


156  A  Handful  of  Stars 

Then,  from  the  winning  of  the  lowest,  she  turned 
to  the  winning  of  the  highest.  She  fastened  her 
eyes  upon  the  Duke  of  WeHington,  the  victor  of 
Waterloo,  the  statesman  of  the  hour,  the  most 
commanding  figure  in  the  three  kingdoms.  Welling- 
ton was  then  sixty-five,  a  man  covered  with  honor 
and  absorbed  in  public  affairs.  But,  to  Miss  Jen- 
kins, he  was  simply  a  great  worldly  figure,  and,  in 
1834,  she  wrote  a  letter — a  letter  winged  by  many 
prayers — warning  him  of  the  peril  of  living  without 
a  sure,  deep  consciousness  of  the  forgiveness  of  sins, 
through  the  redemption  of  Jesus  Christ.  Welling- 
ton's iron  nature  was  strongly  moved.  He  replied 
by  return  of  post,  and  thus  inaugurated  a  corre- 
spondence in  the  course  of  which  he  wrote  to  Miss 
Jenkins  no  fewer  than  three  hundred  and  ninety 
letters.  In  the  course  of  this  amazing  correspond- 
ence, Miss  Jenkins  begged  for  an  interview,  and  it 
was  granted.  Miss  Jenkins  took  out  her  New 
Testament  and  read  to  the  old  warrior  these  very 
words.  'Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  thee,  except  a 
man  he  horn  again,  he  cannot  see  the  Kingdom  of 
Godf  'Here,'  says  Dr.  Fitchett,  in  unfolding  the 
story,  'here  was  a  preacher  of  quite  a  new  type !  A 
girl's  lips  were  reciting  Christ's  tremendous  words : 
"Ye  must  he  horn  again!"  She  was  addressing  them 
directly  to  him,  and  her  uplifted  finger  was  chal- 
lenging him.  Some  long-dormant  religious  sensi- 
bilities awoke  within  him.  The  grace  of  the  speaker, 
and  the  mystic  quality  of  the  thing  spoken,  arrested 


Doctor  Blund's  Text  157 

him.'  To  the  end  of  his  days  the  Duke  firmly  be- 
Heved  that,  by  means  of  this  girl-prophet,  God  Him- 
self spoke  to  his  soul  that  day. 

Mr.  Frederick  Charrington's  story  has  been  put 
on  record  by  Guy  Thorne.  He  was  the  son  of  the 
great  brewer,  the  heir  to  more  than  a  million  pounds, 
and  his  time  was  very  largely  his  own.  He  trav- 
eled and  formed  friendships.  One  of  his  earliest 
friends  was  Lord  Garvagh.  They  traveled  together, 
and,  when  they  parted,  Lord  Garvagh  asked  Char- 
rington  if  he  would  grant  him  one  request.  'When 
you  are  quite  alone,'  his  lordship  pleaded,  T  should 
like  you  to  read  slowly  and  carefully  the  third  chap- 
ter of  John's  Gospel !'  Later  on,  Charrington  met 
William  Rains  ford,  and  the  acquaintance  ripened 
into  intimacy.  *Do  you  know  what  I  wish  you  would 
do,  Fred?'  Rainsford  said  to  him  one  day.  'I  wish, 
when  you  are  by  yourself,  that  you  would  study  the 
third  chapter  of  the  Gospel  of  John!' 

'This  is  a  very  curious  thing,'  Charrington  said 
to  himself.  'My  old  friend,  Lord  Garvagh,  and  my 
new  friend,  Rainsford,  both  say  exactly  the  same 
thing;  and  they  both  profess  to  be  saved.' 

Thus  doubly  challenged,  he  read  the  chapter  with 
the  closest  attention,  and  was  arrested  by  the  words  : 
'Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  thee,  Except  a  tnan  he 
horn  again,  he  cannot  see  the  Kingdom  of  God!' 
'As  I  read,'  he  says,  'light  came  into  my  soul,'  and 
he  ever  afterwards  regarded  that  moment  as  the 
turning-point  of  his  whole  life. 


15$  A  Handful  of  Staxs 

III 

Now,  what  did  these  men — these  and  a  hundred 
thousand  more — see  in  the  strange,  mysterious 
words  that  Jesus  spoke  to  the  aged  ruler  twenty 
centuries  ago?  That  is  the  question,  and  the  ques- 
tion is  not  a  difficult  one  to  answer. 

A  new  birth!  To  be  born  again!  What  can  it 
mean  ?  It  can  only  mean  one  thing.  T  wish,'  some- 
body has  sung — 

I  wish  that  there  were  some  wonderful  place 

Called  the  Land  of  Beginning  Again, 
Where  all  our  mistakes  and  all  our  heartaches 

And  all  of  our  poor,  selfish  grief 
Could  be  dropped,  like  a  shabby  old  coat,  at  the  door, 

And  never  put  on  any  more. 

The  words,  if  they  mean  anything,  mean  that 
there  is  such  a  place.  A  man  may  have  a  fresh 
start.  In  describing  the  greatest  change  that  took 
place  in  his  life — the  greatest  change  that  can  take 
place  in  any  man's  life — Frank  Bullen  says:  *I 
love  that  description  of  conversion  as  the  "new 
birth."  No  other  definition  touches  the  truth  of  the 
process  at  all.  So  helpless,  so  utterly  knowledge- 
less,  possessing  nothing  but  the  vague  consciousness 
of  life  just  begun!'  Dr.  Blund  was  thinking  of  the 
babes  whose  first  breath  he  had  seen  drawn.  So 
innocent ;  so  pastless !  Oh,  to  begin  where  they  were 
beginning!    Oh,  to  be  born  again!' 

Dr.  Blund  cannot  begin  where  they  were  begin- 


Doctor  Blund's  Text  159 

ning.  He  cannot  enjoy  again — at  any  rate  in  this 
world — the  opportunities  of  growth  and  develop- 
ment that  were  theirs.  But  he  can  be  born  again! 
He  can  start  afresh!  Dr.  Blund  made  that  dis- 
covery on  his  deathbed,  and,  in  talking  of  the  dead 
doctor's  experience,  the  young  minister  made  the 
same  discovery  a  day  or  two  later.  He  felt  his 
need;  he  turned  in  an  agony  of  supplication  to  the 
Saviour  whom  he  had  so  often  preached;  and  he, 
too,  entered  into  the  new  life. 

'He  made  the  great  discovery,'  Harold  Begbie 
says.  'It  had  happened;  the  longed-for  event  had 
come;  he  stood  by  himself,  all  by  himself,  conscious 
now  of  the  heart;  no  longer  satisfied  either  with  his 
own  intellect  or  the  traditions  of  a  church.  The 
miracle  had  happened.  He  had  discovered  the  help- 
lessness of  humanity.  He  had  discovered  the  need 
of  the  soul.  He  had  begun  at  last  to  see  into  the 
heart  of  things.'    He  had  been  born  again! 

There  are  two  kinds  of  progress.  There  is  the 
progress  that  moves  away  from  infancy  towards 
youth,  towards  maturity,  towards  age  and  decrepi- 
tude. And  there  is  a  higher  progress,  a  progress 
that  moves  towards  infancy.  'Except  ye  be  con- 
verted and  become  as  little  children,'  Jesus  said,  'ye 
shall  not  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  God.'  And  the 
only  way  of  becoming  a  little  child  once  more  is 
by  being  born  again.  It  is  the  glory  of  the  gospel 
that  it  offers  a  man  that  chance. 


XIV 
HEDLEY  VICARS'  TEXT 


'Those  words  are  the  sheet-anchor  of  my  soul!' 
said  Hedley  Vicars,  a  gallant  young  Army  officer, 
as  he  sat  talking  to  his  sweetheart  in  the  handsome 
drawing-room  at  Terling  Place. 

'Those  words  are  more  golden  than  gold!'  ex- 
claimed Miss  Frances  Ridley  Havergal,  and  she 
ordered  that  they  should  be  inscribed  upon  her 
tomb. 

'Those  words  did  give  a  great  ease  to  my  spirit!' 
John  Bunyan  tells  us. 

'Those  words,'  said  old  Donald  Menzies,  the 
mystic  of  Drumtochty,  'those  words  fell  upon  me 
like  a  gleam  from  the  Mercy-seat!' 

What  words?  Let  us  return  to  Hedley  Vicars! 
He  was  only  twenty-eight  when  he  fell,  leading  his 
regiment — the  Ninety-seventh — in  action  before 
Sebastopol.  The  enemy  attacked  suddenly  under 
cover  of  the  darkness.  'The  men  of  the  Ninety- 
seventh  behaved  with  the  utmost  gallantry  and  cool- 
ness,' said  Lord  Raglan,  in  the  historic  dispatch 
that  reached  England  on  Good  Friday,  1855.  'They 
were  led  by  Captain  Vicars,  who,  unfortunately, 

160 


Hedley  Vicars'  Text,  i6i 

lost  his  life  in  the  engagement;  and  I  am  assured 
that  nothing  could  be  more  distinguished  than  the 
gallantry  and  good  example  which  he  set  to  the  de- 
tachment under  his  command.'  His  biographer  tells 
us  that  it  was  more  than  three  years  earlier — in 
November,  1851 — that,  whilst  awaiting  in  his  room 
the  return  of  a  brother  officer,  he  idly  turned  over 
the  leaves  of  a  Bible  which  lay  on  the  table.  The 
words,  'The  blood  of  Jesus  Christ,  His  Son,  cleanseth 
us  from  all  sin,'  caught  his  eyes  and  profoundly  im- 
pressed his  mind.  'If,'  he  said,  as  he  closed  the 
sacred  Volume,  'if  this  be  true,  I  will  henceforth 
live  by  the  grace  of  God  as  a  man  should  live  who 
has  been  redeemed  by  the  blood  of  Jesus  Christ.' 
That  night  he  could  scarcely  sleep;  the  great  words 
repeated  themselves  again  and  again  within  his 
throbbing  brain ;  they  seemed  too  good  to  be  true. 

'All  sin!    All  sin!' 

'Cleanseth  from  all  sin!' 

'The  blood  of  Jesus  Christ,  His  Son,  cleanseth  us 
from  all  sin.' 

He  never  tired  of  telling  of  that  wonderful  ex- 
perience. Miss  Marsh,  to  whom  he  was  engaged 
to  be  married,  says  that,  almost  as  soon  as  they  were 
first  introduced  to  each  other,  'he  gave  her  an  out- 
line of  the  manner  in  which  God  had  worked  the 
great  change  in  his  heart.  With  forceful  sim- 
plicity he  told  the  point  of  the  story;  how  the  words, 
"The  blood  of  Jesus  Christ,  His  Son,  cleanseth  us 
from  all  sin,"  became  the  sheet-anchor  of  his  soul,. 


i62  A  Handful  of  Stars 

adding,  "Thus  was  I  born  again  of  the  Word  of 
God  which  Hveth  and  abideth  for  ever !"  ' 

II 

Away  back  in  the  infancy  of  the  world  I  hear 
one  of  the  earliest  of  the  Patriarchs  uttering  a  great 
and  bitter  cry.  7  have  sinned!'  he  cries ;  'what  shall 
I  do?'  And,  as  I  turn  over  the  leaves  of  my  Bible, 
I  find  that  question  echoed  again  and  again,  genera- 
tion after  generation  and  age  after  age.  Yet  never 
once  does  it  receive  the  slightest  hint  or  suggestion 
of  an  answer.  And,  depend  upon  it,  if  the  Son  of 
Man  had  never  come  into  the  world,  it  would  have 
echoed  round  the  globe — still  unanswered  and  un- 
answerable— until  this  day.  'O  Plato,  Plato !'  cried 
Socrates,  'it  may  be  that  the  gods  can  forgive  sin, 
but,  alas,  I  do  not  see  how!'  Nor  anybody  else. 
Job's  question  fell  back  upon  his  face;  the  universe 
could  give  him  no  reply.  It  is  very  striking.  And-^ 
so,  here  at  the  beginning  of  my  Bible,  I  hear  the 
first  man's  question;  and,  here  at  the  end  of  my 
Bible,  I  hear  the  last  man's  answer! 

'What  shall  I  do  ?    What  shall  I  do  f 

7  have  sinned;  what  shall  I  do?' 

'The  blood  of  Jesus  Christ,  His  Son,  cleanseth  us 
from  all  sin!' 

Ill 

These  two  men — Job  and  John — present  us,  first 
with  a  comparison,  and  then  with  a  contrast.    It  is 


Hedley  Vicars'  Text  163 

interesting  to  examine  side  by  side  their  views  of 
the  sin  that  represented  so  terrific  a  problem. 

Job  thought  of  it  as  a  contaminating  thing.  He 
felt  that  his  soul  was  soiled.  'What  shall  I  do?'  he 
cries,  'what  shall  I  do?  If  I  bathe  myself  in  snow 
water  and  wash  my  hands  never  so  clean,  yet  shalt 
Thou  plunge  me  in  the  ditch  and  mine  own  clothes 
shall  abhor  me!'  Every  day  of  his  life  he  thought 
he  heard,  morning  and  noon  and  night,  the  awful 
Voice  of  the  Most  High.  'Though  thou  wash  thee 
with  niter,  and  take  thee  much  soap,  yet  thine  in- 
iquity is  marked  before  Me,  saith  the  Lord  Grod.' 
He  felt  as  Macbeth  felt  when  advised  to  cleanse 
the  stain  from  his  guilty  hands. 

Will  all  great  Neptune's  ocean  wash  this  blood 
Clean  from  my  hand !     No,  this  my  hand  will  rather 
The  multitudinous  seas  incarnadine, 
Making  the  green  one  red ! 

Job  was  like  the  old  lama,  in  Rudyard  Kipling's 
Kim,  who,  year  after  year,  wandered  through  cities 
and  rice-fields,  over  the  hills  and  across  the  plains, 
always  searching,  but  searching  in  vain,  for  the 
River,  the  River  of  the  Arrow,  the  River  that 
could  cleanse  from  sin ! 

John,  on  the  other  hand,  thought  of  sin  as  a 
condemning  thing.  The  great  word  'condemnation' 
occurs  on  almost  every  page  of  his  writings.  He 
feels  that  every  man's  sin  carries  its  own  conviction. 
It  is  like  finger-print  evidence;  it  speaks  for  itself; 


i64  A  Handful  of  Stars 

it  needs  no  long  procession  of  corroborating  wit- 
nesses. There  it  is!  It  tells  its  own  terrible  tale, 
and  there  is  no  gainsaying  it. 

IV 

And  yet,  looked  at  in  another  way,  the  thoughts 
of  these  two  men  stand  in  sharp  and  striking  con- 
trast, the  one  with  the  other.  '/  have  sinned,'  cried 
Job ;  'what  shall  I  do  ?    What  shall  I  do  ?' 

But  there  is  no  reply.  In  the  course  of  the  stu- 
pendous drama  that  bears  his  name.  Job  scours  sea 
and  land,  earth  and  sky,  for  some  answer  to  the 
wild  questionings  of  his  soul.  He  climbs  the  sum- 
mits of  the  loftiest  mountains  and  thrids  the  laby- 
rinth of  the  deepest  mine;  he  calls  to  the  heights  of 
the  heavens  and  to  the  depths  of  the  sea.  But  there 
is  no  answering  voice,  and  he  is  left  to  nurse  his 
dumb  and  piteous  despair.  Every  attempt  that  he 
makes  to  rid  his  soul  of  its  defilement  is  like  the 
effort  of  a  man  who,  in  trying  to  remove  the  stain 
from  his  window,  rubs  on  the  wrong  side  of  the 
glass. 

But,  in  contrast  with  all  this,  John  saw  the  Cross ! 
How  could  he  ever  forget  it?  Had  he  not  stood  be- 
side it,  gazed  into  the  thorn-crowned  face,  and  re- 
ceived from  those  quivering  lips  their  last  sacred 
bequest — the  charge  of  the  Saviour's  mother?  And, 
all  through  the  eventful  years  that  followed,  John 
never  tired  of  presenting  the  Cross  as  the  only 
answer  to  the  Patriarch's  question.     He  may  not 


Hedley  Vicars'  Text  165 

have  perfectly  understood  it — no  man  ever  yet  com- 
prehended all  its  heights  and  sounded  all  its  depths ! 
But  it  is  easier  to  accept  it  than  to  reject  it.  For, 
if  I  reject  it,  I  am  confronted  by  an  enigma  even 
more  unanswerable  than  Job's. 

Oh,  why  was  He  there  as  the  Bearer  of  sin 

If  on  Jesus  my  guilt  was  not  laid? 
Oh,  why  from  His  side  flowed  the  sin-cleansing  stream. 

If  His  dying  my  debt  has  not  paid? 

If,  tjiat  is  to  say,  the  Cross  is  not  the  divine  answer 
to  the  mystery  of  all  the  ages,  then  who  shall  at- 
tempt to  solve  the  dark,  inscrutable,  impenetrable 
mystery  of  the  Cross? 

V 

But  it  is!  Experience  proves  it!  In  the  course 
of  his  dazzling  Apocalypse,  John  tells  us  that  he 
saw  a  war  being  waged  in  heaven;  and  the  hosts  of 
righteousness  overcame  their  powerful  and  sinister 
foes  by  the  virtue  of  the  blood  of  the  Lamb.  I  do 
not  know  what  he  means — never  expect  to  know 
in  this  world.  But  I  know  that,  in  this  life,  some- 
thing very  like  it  happens  every  day. 

Martin  Luther  says  that,  in  one  of  his  periods  of 
depression  at  the  Wartburg,  it  seemed  to  him  that 
he  saw  a  hideous  and  malignant  form  inscribing 
the  record  of  his  own  transgressions  round  the  walls 
of  his  room.  There  seemed  to  be  no  end  to  the  list 
— sins  of  thought,  sins  of  word,  sins  of  deed,  sins 
of  omission,  sins  of  commission,  secret  sins,  open 


z66  A  Handful  of  Stars 

sins — the  pitiless  scribe  wrote  on  and  on  Inter- 
minably. Whilst  the  accuser  was  thus  occupied, 
Luther  bowed  his  head  and  prayed.  When  he 
looked  up  again,  the  writer  had  paused,  and,  turning, 
faced  him. 

'Thou  hast  forgotten  just  one  thing!'  said  Luther. 

'And  that — ?'  asked  his  tormentor. 

'Take  thy  pen  once  more  and  write  across  it  all : 
"The  blood  of  Jesus  Christ,  His  Son,  cleanseth  us 
from  all  sin!'"  And,  at  the  utterance  of  those 
words,  the  spirit  vanished  and  the  walls  were  clean ! 

In  his  Grace  Abounding,  Bunyan  tells  us  of  a 
period  in  his  life  during  which  his  soul  seemed  to  be 
held  In  fetters  of  brass;  and,  every  step  he  took,  he 
took  to  the  sound  of  the  clanking  of  chains.  'But 
about  ten  or  eleven  o'clock  on  a  certain  day,'  he 
says,  'as  I  was  walking  under  a  hedge  (full  of  sor- 
row and  guilt,  God  knows),  suddenly  this  sentence 
rushed  in  upon  me,  "The  blood  of  Jesus  Christ,  His 
Son,  cleanseth  us  from  all  sin."  At  this  I  made  a 
stand  In  my  spirit  and  began  to  conceive  peace  in  my 
soul,  and  methought  I  saw  as  if  the  tempter  did  leer 
and  steal  away  from  me,  as  being  ashamed  of  what 
he  had  done.  At  the  same  time  also  I  had  my  sin 
and  the  blood  of  Christ  thus  represented  to  me : 
that  my  sin,  when  compared  to  the  blood  of  Christ, 
was  no  more  to  it  than  this  little  clod  or  stone  Is  to 
the  vast  and  wide  field  that  here  I  see.  This  gave 
me  good  encouragement.' 

Neither  Martin  Luther  nor  John  Bunyan  would 


Hedley  Vicars'  Text  167 

object  to  my  setting  them  in  the  company  of  Donald 
Menzies.  For,  like  them,  Donald  was  at  war  with 
principalities  and  powers,  with  the  rulers  of  the 
darkness  of  this  world,  with  spiritual  wickedness  in 
high  places.  In  the  lonely  anguish  of  that  grim 
struggle  it  seemed  as  though,  at  the  last,  the  gates 
of  hell  must  have  prevailed  against  him. 

'Then,'  he  says,  'I  heard  a  voice,  oh,  yes,  as  plain 
as  you  are  hearing  me :  "The  blood  of  Jesus  Christ, 
His  Son,  cleanseth  us  from  all  sin."  It  was  like  a 
gleam  from  the  Mercy-seat,  but  I  waited  to  see 
whether  Satan  had  any  answer  and  my  heart  was 
standing  still.  But  there  was  no  word  from  him, 
not  one  word.  Then  I  leaped  to  my  feet  and  cried, 
"Get  thee  behind  me,  Satan !"  And  I  looked  round, 
and  there  was  no  one  to  be  seen  but  Janet  in  her 
chair  with  the  tears  on  her  cheeks,  and  she  was 
saying,  "Thanks  be  to  God  which  giveth  us  the  vic- 
tory through  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ !"  ' 

'When  I  uttered  those  words,'  says  Luther,  'the 
evil  spirit  vanished  and  the  walls  were  clean!' 

'When  I  made  a  stand  upon  those  words,'  says 
Bunyan,  'the  tempter  did  steal  away  from  me  and  I 
entered  into  peace!' 

'When  I  heard  those  words'  says  Donald  Men- 
zies, 7  zvaited  to  see  if  Satan  had  any  answer,  but 
there  was  no  word  from  him,  not  one  word!' 

This,  surely,  is  what  the  seer  means  when  he 
says  that  he  saw  all  the  hosts  of  evil  routed  and 
scattered  by  the  virtue  of  the  blood  of  the  .Lamb. 


368  A  Handful  of  Stars 

VI 

Down  at  the  library  yesterday  afternoon  I  spent 
an  hour  in  glancing  through  the  various  volumes 
of  Southey's  Commonplace  Book.  And,  among 
a  vast  assortment  of  musty  notes  that  are  now  of 
interest  to  nobody,  I  came  upon  this :  *I  have  been 
reading  of  a  man  on  the  Malabar  coast  who  had 
inquired  of  many  devotees  and  priests  as  to  how 
he  might  make  atonement  for  his  sins.  At  last  he 
was  directed  to  drive  iron  spikes,  sufficiently 
blunted,  through  his  sandals,  and  on  these  spikes 
he  was  to  place  his  naked  feet  and  then  walk  a 
distance  of  five  hundred  miles.  He  undertook  the 
journey,  but  loss  of  blood  and  exhaustion  of  body 
compelled  him  to  rest  one  day  under  the  shade  of  a 
spreading  tree.  As  he  lay  there,  a  missionary  ap- 
proached and  began  to  preach  the  gospel.  He  an- 
noimced  as  his  theme  the  words:  "The  blood  of 
Jesus  Christ,  His  Son,  cleanseth  us  from  all  sin." 
Whilst  the  evangelist  still  preached,  the  man  sprang 
up,  tore  off  his  sandals,  and  cried  aloud:  "That  is 
what  I  want!  That  is  what  I  want!"  And  he  be- 
came a  living  witness  to  the  fact  that  the  redeeming 
blood  of  Christ  does  cleanse  from  human  guilt.' 

*That  is  what  I  want!'  cried  Southey's  pilgrim  on 
the  coast  of  Malabar. 

'That  is  what  I  want!'  cried  Luther  in  the  Wart- 
burg. 

'That  is  what  I  want!'  cried  Bunyan  at  Bedford. 


Hedley  Vicars'  Text  169 

'That  is  what  I  want!'  cried  Donald  Menzies  at 
Drumtochty. 

'That  is  what  I  want!*  exclaimed  young  Hedley 
Vicars,  as  his  startled  eyes  fell  upon  the  tremendous 
words  that  seemed  to  leap  from  the  Bible  on  the 
table.  'The  blood  of  Jesus  Christ,  His  Son,  cleans- 
eth  us  from  all  sin.'  *That  is  what  I  want !  That  is 
what  I  want!' 

Hedley  Vicars  appropriated  the  priceless  gift  held 
out  to  him,  and  his  whole  life  was  transfigured  in 
consequence.  His  life — and  his  death!  For,  on 
that  fatal  night  before  Sebastopol,  it  was  with  Hed- 
ley Vicars  as  it  was  with  the  soldier  with  whom  the 
poet  has  familiarized  us.  Everybody  knows  the 
story.  Two  men  of  God  moved  in  the  darkness 
across  the  field  on  which,  that  day,  a  battle  had 
been  fought. 

And  now  they  stand 
Beside  a  manly  form,  outstretched  alone. 
His  helmet  from  his  head  had  fallen.    His  hand 
Still  firmly  grasped  his  keen  but  broken  sword. 
His  face  was  white  and  cold,  and,  thinking  he  was  gone, 
They  were  just  passing  on,  for  time  was  precious, 
When  a  faint  sigh  caught  their  attentive  ears. 
Life  was  still  there,  so  bending  down, 
They  whispered  in  his  ears  most  earnestly, 
Yet  with  that  hush  and  gentleness  with  which 
We  ever  speak  to  a  departing  soul — 
'Brother!  the  blood  of  Jesus  Christ,  God's  Son, 
Cleanseth  from  every  sin.' 

The  pale  lips  moved, 
And  gently  whispered  'hush !'  and  then  they  closed, 
And  life  again  seemed  gone. 


I70  A  Handful  of  Stars 

But  yet  once  more 
They  whispered  those  thrice  blessed  words,  in  hope 
To  point  the  parting  soul  to  Christ  and  heaven — 
'Brother!  the  precious  blood  of  Jesus  Christ 
Can  cleanse  from  every  sin.' 

Again  the  pale  lips  moved, 
All  else  was  still  and  motionless,  for  Death 
Already  had  his  fatal  work  half  done; 
But  gathering  up  his  quickly  failing  strength, 
The  dying  soldier — dying  victor — said: 
'Hush !  for  the  angels  call  the  muster  roll ! 
I  wait  to  hear  my  name !' 

They  spoke  no  more. 
What  need  to  speak  again?  for  now  full  well 
They  knew  on  whom  his  dying  hopes  were  fixed. 
And  what  his  prospects  were.    So,  hushed  and  still, 
They,  kneeling,  watched. 

And  presently  a  smile, 
As  of  most  thrilling  and  intense  delight. 
Played  for  a  moment  on  the  soldier's  face, 
And  with  his  one  last  breath  he  whispered  'Here !' 

V  have  sinned!  What  shall  I  do?'  cries  this 
despairing  soul  at  the  beginning  of  my  Bible. 

'The  blood  of  Jesus  Christ,  His  Son,  cleanseth  us 
from  all  sin!'  answers  the  man  who  leaned  upon  the 
Saviour's  breast  and  gazed  full  into  the  thorn- 
crowned  face  of  the  Crucified. 

'That  is  what  I  want!'  exclaims  the  man  at  Mala- 
bar, speaking,  not  for  himself  alone,  but  for  each 
and  all  of  us. 

'Those  words  are  more  golden  than  gold!'  says 


Hedley  Vicars'  Text  171 

Miss  Havergal,  as  she  orders  them  to  be  inscribed 
upon  her  tomb. 

'They  are  like  a  gleam  from  the  Mercy-seat!'  cries 
Donald  Menzies. 

'They  are  the  sheet-anchor  of  my  soul!'  Hedley 
Vicars  tells  his  sweetheart.  And  he  is  a  very  wise 
man  who,  in  the  straits  of  his  experience,  stakes 
his  faith  upon  that  which  such  witnesses  have  tested 
and  have  found  sublimely  true. 


XV 
SILAS  WRIGHT'S  TEXT 


Silas  Wright  was  deprived  by  sheer  modesty  of 
the  honor  of  being  President  of  the  United  States. 
His  is  one  of  the  truly  Homeric  figures  in  Amer- 
ican history.  By  downright  purity  of  motive, 
transparency  of  purpose,  and  the  devotion  of  com- 
manding powers  to  the  public  good,  he  won  for  him- 
self the  honor,  the  love  and  the  unbounded  confi- 
dence of  all  his  fellows.  It  used  to  be  said  of  him 
that  he  was  as  honest  as  any  man  under  heaven 
or  in  it.  He  might  have  aspired  to  any  office  to 
which  it  was  in  America's  power  to  call  him.  Only 
his  extreme  humility,  and  his  dread  of  impeding 
the  promotion  of  his  friends,  kept  him  from  rising 
to  a  position  in  which  his  name  would  have  taken 
its  place  with  those  of  Washington  and  Lincoln. 
But  he  refused  almost  every  honor.  'He  refused 
cabinet  appointments,'  says  Benton,  in  his  Thirty 
Years'  View.  *He  refused  a  seat  on  the  bench  of 
the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States;  he  rejected 
instantly  the  nomination  of  1844  ^or  Vice-Presi- 
dent; he  refused  to  be  nominated  for  the  Presi- 
dency.    He  spent  as  much  time  in  declining  office 

173 


Silas  Wright's  Text  173 

as  others  did  in  winning  it.  The  offices  he  did 
accept  were  thrust  upon  him.  He  was  born  great 
and  above  office  and  unwillingly  descended  to  it.' 
Whittier  is  very  conservative  in  his  choice  of  he- 
roes. Those  whom  he  commemorates  in  verse  are 
not  only  great  men,  but  good  ones.  And  Silas 
Wright  is  among  them.  'Man  of  the  millions,'  he 
says,  in  the  lines  that  he  penned  on  hearing  of  Mr. 
Wright's  death : 

Man  of  the  millions,  thou  art  lost  too  soon ! 
Portents  at  which  the  bravest  stand  aghast — 
The  birththroes  of  a  Future,  strange  and  vast, 
Alarm  the  land;  yet  thou,  so  wise,  and  strong. 
Suddenly  summoned  to  the  burial  bed, 
Lapped  in  its  slumbers  deep  and  ever  long, 
Hear'st  not  the  tumult  surging  overhead. 
Who  now  shall  rally  Freedom's  scattered  host? 
Who  wear  the  mantle  of  the  leader  lost? 

The  splendid  personality  of  Silas  Wright  has 
been  best  revealed  to  us  in  Irving  Bacheller's  The 
Light  in  the  Clearing.  The  book  is  partly  history 
and  partly  commentary  and  partly  fiction.  Silas 
Wright,  says  Irving  Bacheller,  carried  the  candle 
of  the  Lord;  and  all  the  world  rejoiced  in  its  ra- 
diance. 

II 

Barton  Baynes,  the  hero  of  the  book — for  whose 
actuality  and  historicity  the  author  vouches — is  an 
orphan  brought  up  on  a  farm  by  his  Uncle  Pea- 
body  and  Aunt  Deel.     Getting   into  all   sorts  of 


174  A  Handful  of  Stars 

scrapes,  he  makes  up  his  mind  that  he  is  too  heavy 
a  burden  on  the  affectionate  and  good-natured 
couple;  and  one  night  he  runs  away.  Out  in  the 
darkness,  however,  he  meets  with  strange  adven- 
tures, loses  his  way,  and  at  length  finds  himself  in 
the  hands  of  Silas  Wright,  the  Comptroller.  The 
Senator  first  falls  in  love  with  the  bright-faced, 
open-hearted,  intelligent  boy,  and  then  takes  him 
back  to  his  uncle's  farm.  From  that  moment  the 
friendship  between  the  two — the  great  man  and  the 
obscure  country  boy — grows  apace.  After  a  while 
the  Senator  visits  the  district  to  deliver  an  address, 
and  he  spends  the  night  at  the  farmhouse.  It  is  a 
great  occasion  for  Bart;  and  after  supper  an  inci- 
dent occurs  that  colors  all  his  life  and  strikes  the 
keynote  of  the  book.  As  Barton  approaches  Mr. 
Wright  to  say  Good-night,  the  Senator  says: 

'I  shall  be  gone  when  you  are  up  in  the  morning. 
It  may  be  a  long  time  before  I  see  you ;  I  shall  leave 
something  for  you  in  a  sealed  envelope  with  your 
name  on  it.  You  are  not  to  open  the  envelope  until 
you  go  away  to  school.  I  know  how  you  will  feel 
that  first  day.  When  night  falls,  you  will  think  of 
your  aunt  and  uncle  and  be  very  lonely.  When  you 
go  to  your  room  for  the  night  I  want  you  to  sit  down 
all  by  yourself  and  read  what  I  shall  write.  They 
will  be,  I  think,  the  most  impressive  words  ever 
written.  You  will  think  them  over,  but  you  will  not 
understand  them  for  a  long  time.  Ask  every  wise 
man  you  meet  to  explain  them  to  you,  for  all  your 


Silas  Wright's  Tejrt  175 

happiness  will  depend  upon  your  understanding  of 
those  few  words  in  the  envelope.' 

The  words  in  the  sealed  envelope ! 

What  are  the  mysterious  words  in  the  envelope? 

And  what  if  the  sealed  envelope  contains  a  textf 


III 

In  the  morning,  when  Barton  rose,  the  Senator 
was  gone,  and  Aunt  Deel  handed  the  boy  the  sealed 
envelope.  It  was  addressed :  'Master  Barton 
Baynes ;  to  be  opened  when  he  leaves  home  to  go  to 
school.'  That  day  soon  came.  At  the  Canton 
Academy,  under  the  care  of  the  excellent  Michael 
Racket,  Bart  felt  terribly  lonely,  and,  in  accordance 
with  the  Senator's  instructions,  he  opened  the  note. 
And  this  is  what  he  read : 

'Dear  Bart,  I  want  you  to  ask  the  wisest  man 
you  know  to  explain  these  words  to  you.  I  suggest 
that  you  commit  them  to  memory  and  think  often 
of  their  meaning.  They  are  from  Job :  "His  bones 
are  full  of  the  sin  of  his  youth,  which  shall  lie  down 
with  him  in  the  dust."  I  believe  that  they  are  the 
most  impressive  in  all  the  literature  I  have  read. — 
Silas  Wright.' 

Bart  soon  learned  to  love  and  admire  the  school- 
master; he  was  the  wisest  man  he  knew;  to  him, 
therefore,  he  went  for  an  explanation  of  the  words. 

'All  true!'  exclaimed  Mr.  Hacket,  after  reading 
the  note.    *I  have  seen  it  sinking  into  the  bones  of 


176  A  Handful  of  Stars 

the  young,  and  I  have  seen  it  lying  down  with  the 
aged  in  the  dust  of  their  graves.  Your  body  is  Hke 
a  sponge;  it  takes  things  in  and  holds  them  and 
feeds  upon  them.  A  part  of  every  apple  that  you 
eat  sinks  down  into  your  blood  and  bones.  You 
can't  get  it  out.  It's  the  same  with  the  books  that 
you  read  and  the  thoughts  that  you  enjoy.  They 
go  down  into  your  bones  and  you  can't  get  them 
out.  A  man's  hones  are  full  of  the  sin  of  his  youth, 
which  lies  down  with  him  in  the  dust!' 


IV 

But  the  best  exposition  of  the  text  is  not  Michael 
Racket's,  but  Irving  Bacheller's.  The  whole  book 
is  a  vivid  and  arresting  and  terrible  forth-setting 
of  the  impressive  words  that  Barton  found  in  his 
sealed  envelope. 

All  through  the  book  two  dreadful  characters 
move  side  by  side — Benjamin  Grimshaw  and  Silent 
Kate.  Benjamin  Grimshaw  is  rich  and  proud  and 
pitiless.  Everybody  is  afraid  of  him.  But  Roving 
Kate  is  not  afraid.  Indeed,  he  seems  to  be  more 
afraid  of  her.  Wherever  he  is,  she  is  there.  She 
is  wild  and  bony  and  ragged.  She  is,  or  pretends  to 
be,  half  demented.  She  tells  fortunes  with  strange 
antics  and  gesticulations,  scrawling  her  prognosti- 
cations upon  stray  slips  of  paper.  But  Benjamin 
Grimshaw  is  the  main  object  of  her  attention.  She 
hates  him,  and  hates  him  all  the  more  terribly  be- 


Silas  Wright's  Text  177 

cause  she  once  loved  him.  For  Roving  Kate,  the 
Silent  Woman,  was  once  Kate  Fullerton,  Squire 
Fullerton's  pretty  daughter.  And  Benjamin  Grim- 
shaw  had  loved  her,  and  betrayed  her,  and  spumed 
her,  and  married  another.  In  the  village  cemetery 
you  might  have  seen  a  tombstone  bearing  her  name. 
Her  father  erected  it  to  show  that  she  was  dead  to 
him  for  ever.  Poor  Kate  had  never  known  her 
mother.  And  so,  in  the  course  of  the  story,  Benja- 
min Grimshaw  had  two  sons,  only  one  of  whom  he 
recognized.  For  Kate  Fullerton  was  the  mother 
of  the  other.  And,  in  her  shame  and  her  anger 
and  her  hate,  Kate  resolved  to  follow  the  father  of 
her  base-born  child  all  the  days  of  his  life;  and  there 
she  stands — unkempt,  repulsive,  menacing — always 
near  him,  the  living  embodiment  of  the  sin  of  his 
youth. 

Amos  Grimshaw,  his  petted  and  pampered  son, 
comes  to  the  gallows.  He  is  convicted  of  murder 
upon  the  highway.  The  father  is  in  court  when  the 
Judge  pronounces  the  awful  sentence.  And,  of 
course.  Roving  Kate  is  there.  Ragged  as  ever,  the 
Silent  Woman  is  waiting  for  him  as  he  comes  down 
the  steps.  She  shoots  out  a  bony  finger  at  him,  as, 
bowed  and  broken,  he  passes  into  the  street.  He 
turns  and  strikes  at  her  with  his  cane. 

'Go  away  from  me,'  he  cries.  'Take  her  away, 
somebody!  I  can't  stand  it!  She's  killing  me! 
Take  her  away !' 

His  face  turns  purple  and  then  livid.     He  reels. 


1 78  A  Handful  of  Stars 

and  falls  headlong.  He  is  dead!  Three  days  later 
they  bury  him.  Roving  Kate  stands  by  the  grave- 
side, strangely  changed.  She  is  decently  dressed; 
her  hair  is  neatly  combed;  the  wild  look  has  left 
her  eyes.  She  looks  like  one  v^hose  back  is  re- 
lieved of  a  heavy  burden.  She  scatters  little  red 
squares  of  paper  into  the  grave,  her  lips  moving 
silently.  These  are  her  last  curses.  Barton  Baynes 
and  his  schoolmaster,  Mr.  Hacket,  are  standing  by. 
*The  scarlet  sins  of  his  youth  are  lying  down  with 
him  in  the  dust,'  whispers  the  master  to  his  pupil  as 
they  walk  away  together. 


This  is  terrible  enough — the  thought  of  our  sins 
surrounding  our  deathbeds  and  lying  down  with  us 
in  our  graves — but  the  book  contains  something 
more  profound  and  terrible  still ! 

For,  in  addition  to  the  grave  of  Benjamin  Grim- 
shaw,  from  which  we  have  just  turned  sadly  away, 
there  are  two  other  graves  in  the  book.  The  one 
is  a  felon's  grave — the  grave  of  Amos  Grimshaw. 
And  what  sins  are  these  that  are  lying  down  with 
him  in  the  dust?  They  are  some  of  them  his  own; 
and  they  are  some  of  them  his  father's;  and  they 
are  some  of  them  the  sins  of  Roving  Kate,  the  Si- 
lent Woman.  Yes,  they  are  some  of  them  the 
woman's  sins.  For  when  Amos  was  but  an  im- 
pressionable boy,  Kate  had  supplied  him  with  litera- 
ture by  which  she  hoped  to  pollute  and  ruin  him. 


Silas  Wright's  Text  179 

Out  of  the  deathless  hatred  that  she  bore  to  the 
father,  she  longed  to  destroy  the  son,  body  and 
soul.  She  gave  him  tales  that  would  inflame  his 
fancy  and  excite  his  baser  instincts,  tales  that  glori- 
fied robbery,  murder  and  villainy  of  every  kind. 
If  Amos  Grimshaw  had  been  a  good  man's  son, 
and  if  ennobling  influences  had  been  brought  to 
bear  upon  him,  he  might  have  lived  to  old  age 
and  gone  down  at  last  to  an  honored  grave.  But 
his  father's  example  was  always  before  him,  and 
Kate's  books  did  their  dreadful  work  only  too  well. 
He  became  a  highway  robber;  he  shot  a  stranger 
on  a  lonely  road.  It  came  out  in  evidence  that  the 
deed  had  been  perpetrated  under  circumstances 
identical  with  those  described  in  one  of  the  sensa- 
tional stories  found  in  the  Grimshaw  barn — the 
stories  Kate  had  given  him! 

'It's  the  same  with  the  books  you  read,'  the 
schoolmaster  had  said,  when  Bart  sought  from  him 
an  explanation  of  the  text  in  the  sealed  envelope; 
'they  go  down  into  your  bones  and  you  can't  get 
them  out.' 

And  Kate's  books  had  gone  down  into  Amos 
Grimshaw's  bones;  and  thus  her  sins  and  his 
father's  sins  lay  down  in  the  dust  of  the  felon's 
grave  and  mingled  with  his  own.  No  exposition  of 
Silas  Wright's  text  could  be  more  arresting  or 
alarming  than  that.  My  sins  may  overflow  from 
my  grave  and  lie  down  in  the  dust  with  my  chil- 
dren! 


i8o  A  Handful  of  Stars 


VI 


And,  on  the  very  last  page  of  The  Light  in  the 
Clearing,  we  have  an  even  more  striking  present- 
ment of  the  same  profound  truth.  For  I  said  that, 
in  the  book,  there  is  yet  one  other  grave.  It  is  a 
lonely  grave  up  among  the  hills — the  grave  of  the 
stranger  who  was  shot  by  Amos  Grimshaw  that 
dark  night;  and  this  time  it  is  old  Kate  who  sits 
weeping  beside  it.  For  who  was  the  stranger  mur- 
dered upon  the  highway?  It  turns  out  to  have 
been  Kate's  own  son! 

'It  is  very  sorrowful,'  she  moans.  'He  was  try- 
ing to  find  me  when  he  died !' 

And  so  the  murderer  and  the  murdered  were 
step-brothers!  They  were  both  the  sons  of  Benja- 
min Grimshaw! 

And,  in  this  grave  up  among  the  hills,  there  lie 
down  with  poor  murdered  Enoch  his  own  sins — 
whatever  they  may  have  been — and  his  father's 
sins — the  sins  that  made  him  an  outcast  and  a  fu- 
gitive— and  his  mother's  sins,  the  sins  of  the  only 
being  who  loved  him! 

Yes,  his  mother's  sins;  for  his  mother's  sins  had 
slain  him.  In  her  hatred  of  Benjamin  Grimshaw, 
she  had  moved  Amos  Grimshaw  to  become  a  mur- 
derer, and  he  had  murdered — her  own  son! 

'It  is  very  sorrowful!'  she  moans. 
I     It  is  indeed;  sin  is  always  sorrowful. 


Silas  Wright's  Text  i8z 

VII 

'Wherefore  come  now  and  let  us  reason  together, 
saith  the  Lord;  though  your  sins  be  as  scarlet,  they 
shall  be  as  white  as  snow;  though  they  be  red  like 
crimson,  they  shall  be  as  wool.' 

It  is  best  to  make  an  end  of  them,  and  to  turn 
from  them,  once  and  for  all,  that  they  lie  down  at 
last  neither  with  us  nor  with  our  children. 


XVI 

MICHAEL  FARADAY'S  TEXT 


The  lecturer  had  vanished!  A  crowded  gathering 
of  distinguished  scientists  had  been  listening,  spell- 
bound, to  the  masterly  expositions  of  Michael  Fara- 
day. For  an  hour  he  had  held  his  brilliant  audience 
enthralled  as  he  had  demonstrated  the  nature  and 
properties  of  the  magnet.  And  he  had  brought  his 
lecture  to  a  close  with  an  experiment  so  novel,  so 
bewildering  and  so  triumphant  that,  for  some  time 
after  he  resumed  his  seat,  the  house  rocked  with 
enthusiastic  applause.  And  then  the  Prince  of 
Wales — afterwards  King  Edward  the  Seventh — 
rose  to  propose  a  motion  of  congratulation.  The 
resolution,  having  been  duly  seconded,  was  carried 
with  renewed  thunders  of  applause.  But  the  uproar 
was  succeeded  by  a  strange  silence.  The  assem- 
bly waited  for  Faraday's  reply ;  but  the  lecturer  had 
vanished!  What  had  become  of  him?  Only  two 
or  three  of  his  more  intimate  friends  were  in  the 
secret.  They  knew  that  the  great  chemist  was 
something  more  than  a  great  chemist ;  he  was  a  great 
Christian.  He  was  an  elder  of  a  little  Sandemanian 
Church — a  church  that  never  boasted  more  than 
twenty  members.    The  hour  at  which  Faraday  con- 

182 


Michael  Faraday's  Text  185 

eluded  his  lecture  was  the  hour  of  the  week-night 
prayer-meeting.  That  meeting  he  never  neglected. 
And,  under  cover  of  the  cheering  and  applause,  the 
lecturer  had  slipped  out  of  the  crowded  hall  and 
hurried  off  to  the  little  meeting-house  where  two 
or  three  had  met  together  to  renew  their  fellowship 
with  God. 

In  that  one  incident  the  man  stands  revealed. 
All  the  sublimities  and  all  the  simplicities  of  life 
met  in  his  soul.  The  master  of  all  the  sciences,  he 
kept  in  his  breast  the  heart  of  a  little  child.  Mr, 
Cosmo  Monkhouse  has  well  asked — 

Was  ever  man  so  simple  and  so  sage, 

So  crowned  and  yet  so  careless  of  a  prize? 
Great  Faraday,  who  made  the  world  so  wise, 

And  loved  the  labor  better  than  the  wage ! 

And  this,  you  say,  is  how  he  looked  in  age. 

With  that  strong  brow  and  these  great  humble  eyes 
That  seem  to  look  with  reverent  surprise 

On  all  outside  himself.     Turn  o'er  the  page, 

Recording  Angel,  it  is  white  as  snow ! 
Ah,  God,  a  fitting  messenger  was  he 

To  show  Thy  mysteries  to  us  below ! 

Child  as  he  came  has  he  returned  to  Thee ! 

Would  he  could  come  but  once  again  to  show 
The  wonder-deep  of  his  simplicity ! 

In  him  the  simplicities  were  always  stronger  than 
the  sublimities;  the  child  outlived  the  sage.     As  he 
lay  dying  they  tried  to  interview  the  professor,  but 
it  was  the  little  child  in  him  that  answered  them. 
'What  are  your  speculations?'  they  inquired. 


i84  A  Handful  of  Stars 

'Speculations?'  he  asked,  in  wondering  surprise. 
'Speculations!  I  have  none!  I  am  resting  on  cer- 
tainties. /  know  whom  I  have  believed  and  am  per- 
suaded that  He  is  able  to  keep  that  which  I  have 
committed  unto  Him  against  that  day!'  And,  revel- 
ing like  a  little  child  in  those  cloudless  simplicities, 
his  great  soul  passed  away. 

II 

Faraday  was  a  perpetual  mystery.  He  baffled 
all  his  colleagues  and  companions.  Nobody  could 
understand  how  the  most  learned  man  of  his  time 
could  find  in  his  faith  those  restful  certainties  on 
which  he  so  calmly  and  securely  reposed.  They  saw 
him  pass  from  a  meeting  of  the  Royal  Society  to 
sit  at  the  feet  of  a  certain  local  preacher  who  was 
notorious  for  his  illiteracy;  and  the  spectacle  filled 
them  with  bewilderment  and  wonder.  Some  sug- 
gested that  he  was,  in  an  intellectual  sense,  living  a 
double  life.  Tyndall  said  that,  when  Faraday 
opened  the  door  of  his  oratory,  he  shut  that  of  his 
laboratory.  He  did  nothing  of  the  kind.  He  never 
closed  his  eyes  to  any  fragment  of  truth;  he  never 
divided  his  mind  into  watertight  compartments;  he 
never  shrank  from  the  approach  of  a  doubt.  He 
saw  life  whole.  His  biography  has  been  written 
a  dozen  times ;  and  each  writer  views  it  from  a  new 
angle.  But  in  one  respect  they  all  agree.  They 
agree  that  Michael  Faraday  was  the  most  trans- 
parently honest  soul  that  the  realm  of  science  has 


Michael  Faraday's  Text  185 

ever  known.  He  moved  for  fifty  years  amidst  the 
speculations  of  science  whilst,  in  his  soul,  the  cer- 
tainties that  cannot  be  shaken  were  singing  their 
deathless  song.  Like  a  coastguard  who,  standing 
on  some  tall  cliff,  surveys  the  heaving  waters,  Fara- 
day stood,  with  his  feet  upon  the  rock,  looking  out 
upon  a  restless  sea  of  surmise  and  conjecture.  In 
life,  as  in  death,  he  rested  his  soul  upon  certainties. 
And  if  you  will  ask  what  those  certainties  were, 
his  biographers  will  tell  you  that  they  were  three. 

1.  He  trusted  implicitly  in  the  Father's  love.  'My 
faculties  are  slipping  away  day  by  day,'  he  wrote 
to  his  niece  from  his  deathbed.  'Happy  is  it  for 
all  of  us  that  our  true  good  lies  not  in  them.  As 
they  ebb,  may  they  leave  us  as  little  children  trust- 
ing in  the  Father  of  Mercies  and  accepting  His  un- 
speakable gift.' 

2.  He  trusted  implicitly  in  the  Redeeming  Work 
of  His  Saviour.  'The  plan  of  salvation  is  so  simple,' 
he  wrote,  'that  anyone  can  understand  it — love  to 
Christ  springing  from  the  love  that  He  bears  us, 
the  love  that  led  Him  to  undertake  our  salvation.' 

3.  He  trusted  implicitly  in  the  Written  Word. 
*To  complete  this  picture,'  says  Dr.  Bence  Jones, 
in  bringing  to  a  close  his  great  two-volume  biog- 
raphy, 'to  complete  this  picture,  I  must  add  that 
Faraday's  standard  of  duty  was  not  founded  upon 
any  intuitive  ideas  of  right  and  wrong,  nor  was  it 
fashioned  upon  any  outward  experiences  of  time 
and  place;  but  it  was  formed  entirely  on  what  he 


1 86  A  Handful  of  Stars 

held  to  be  the  revelation  of  the  will  of  God  in  the 
written  Word,  and  throughout  all  his  life  his  faith 
led  him  to  act  up  to  the  very  letter  of  it.' 

'On  these  certainties,'  he  exclaimed,  *I  stake 
everything!  On  these  certainties  I  rest  my  soul!' 
And,  summing  up  the  three  in  one,  he  added,  'For 
I  am  persuaded  that  He  is  able  to  keep  that  which  I 
have  committed  unto  Him  against  that  day.' 

It  is  wonderful  how  the  universal  heart  aches 
for  assurance,  for  confidence,  for  finality,  for  cer- 
tainty. Mr.  Dan  Crawford  tells  of  a  cannibal  chief 
beside  whose  deathbed  an  African  boy  was  reading 
selections  from  the  Gospel  of  John.  He  was  im- 
pressed by  the  frequent  recurrence  of  the  words 
'verily,  verily.' 

'What  do  they  mean?'  he  asked. 

'They  mean  "certainly,  certainly!"  ' 

'Then,'  exclaimed  the  dying  man,  with  a  sigh  of 
infinite  relief,  'they  shall  be  my  pillow.  I  rest  on 
them.' 

Sage  or  savage,  it  is  all  the  same.  Bunyan's 
great  night  was  the  night  on  which  he  found  that 
same  pillow.  'It  was  with  joy  that  I  told  my  wife, 
"O,  now  I  know,  /  know!"  That  night  was  a  good 
night  to  me !  I  never  had  a  better.  I  longed  for 
the  company  of  some  of  God's  people,  that  I  might 
have  imparted  unto  them  what  God  had  showed  me. 
Christ  was  a  precious  Christ  to  my  soul  that  night; 
I  could  scarcely  lie  in  my  bed  for  joy  and  peace 
and  triumph  through  Christ!' 


Michael  Faraday's  Text  187 

'Those  words  shall  he  my  pillow!'  said  the  African 
chief. 

'Those  words  shall  be  my  pillow!'  said  the  Eng- 
hsh  scientist. 

'Those  words  shall  he  my  pillow!'  cried  John 
Bunyan. 

'For  I  am  persuaded  that  He  is  able  to  keep  that 
which  I  have  committed  unto  Him  against  that  day!' 

Ill 

'He  is  able  to  keep!'  That  was  the  subHme  confi- 
dence that  won  the  heart  of  John  Newton.  It  came 
to  him  in  the  form  of  a  dream  on  his  voyage  home 
from  Venice.  I  have  told  the  story  in  full  in  A 
Bunch  of  Everlastings.  *It  made,'  he  says,  'a  very 
great  impression  upon  me!'  The  same  thought 
made  an  indelible  impression  upon  the  mind  of 
Faraday,  and  he  clung  tenaciously  to  it  at  the  last. 
'He  is  able  to  keep' — as  a  shepherd  keeps  his  sheep. 
'He  is  able  to  keep' — as  a  sentry  keeps  the  gate.  'He 
is  able  to  keep' — as  the  pilgrims  kept  the  golden  ves- 
sels on  their  journey  to  Jerusalem,  both  counting 
and  weighing  them  before  they  set  out  from  Baby- 
lon and  again  on  their  arrival  at  the  Holy  City.  'He 
is  able  to  keep' — as  a  banker  keeps  the  treasure 
confided  to  his  custody. 

7  know  whom  I  have  believed'  says  the  margin 
of  the  Revised  Version,  'and  I  am  persuaded  that 
He  is  able  to  guard  my  deposit  against  that  day.' 


1 88  A  Handful  of  Stars 

'I  know  in  whom  my  trust  reposes'  says  Dr. 
Weymouth's  translation,  'and  I  am  confident  that 
He  has  it  in  His  power  to  keep  what  I  have  en- 
trusted to  Him  safe  until  that  day' 

'I  know  whom  I  have  trusted'  says  Dr.  Moffatt's 
version,  'and  I  am  certain  that  He  is  able  to  keep 
what  I  have  put  into  His  hands  till  the  Great  Day.' 

He  will  guard  my  treasure! 

He  will  honor  my  confidence! 

He  will  hold  my  deposit! 

I  know!    I  know!    I  know! 


IV 

Faraday's  text  is  an  ill-used  text.  It  is  frequently 
mis-quoted.  It  occurred  one  day  in  the  course  of 
a  theological  lesson  over  which  Rabbi  Duncan  was 
presiding. 

'Repeat  that  passage!'  said  the  Rabbi  to  the  stu- 
dent who  had  just  spoken. 

'I  know  in  whom  I  have ■* 

'My  dear  sir,'  interrupted  the  Rabbi,  'you  must 
never  let  even  a  preposition  come  between  you  and 
your  Saviour!' 

And  when  Dr.  Alexander,  of  Princeton,  was 
dying,  a  friend  endeavored  to  fortify  his  faith  by 
reciting  some  of  the  most  famihar  passages  and 
promises.     Presently  he  ventured  upon  the  words : 

'I  know  in  whom  I  have  believed,  and ' 

But  the  sick  man  raised  his  hand. 


Michael  Faraday's  Text  189 

*No,  no,'  exclaimed  the  dying  Principal,  'it  is  not 
"I  know  in  whom"  but  "I  know  whom";  I  cannot 
have  even  the  little  word  "in"  between  me  and 
Christ.  /  know  whom  I  have  believed,  and  am  per- 
suaded that  He  is  able  to  keep  that  which  I  have 
committed  unto  Him  against  that  day!' 

John  Oxenham  has  expressed  the  same  thought 
with  an  accent  and  emphasis  well  worthy  of  the 
theme : 

Not  What,  but  Whom,  I  do  believe, 
That,  in  my  darkest  hour  of  need. 
Hath  comfort  that  no  mortal  creed 
To  mortal  man  may  give. 

Not  What  but  Whom. 
For  Christ  is  more  than  all  the  creeds, 
And  His  full  life  of  gentle  deeds 
Shall  all  the  creeds  outlive. 

Not  What  I  do  believe,  but  Whom. 
Who  walks  beside  me  in  the  gloom? 
Who  shares  the  burden  wearisome? 
Who  all  the  dim  way  doth  illume. 
And  bids  me  look  beyond  the  tomb 
The  larger  life  to  live? 

Not  what  I  do  believe. 
But  Whom! 
Not  What, 
But  Whom! 

It  was  a  Person,  a  Living  and  Divine  Person,  of 
whom  Faraday  was  so  certain  and  on  whom  he 
rested  so  securely  at  the  last. 


I90  A  Handful  of  Stars 

V 

Is  there  in  all  Scottish  literature  a  more  robust, 
more  satisfying,  or  more  lovable  character  than 
Donal  Grant?  Readers  of  George  Macdonald  will 
cherish  the  thought  of  Donal  as  long  as  they  live. 
He  was  the  child  of  the  open  air;  his  character 
was  formed  during  long  and  lonely  tramps  on  the 
wide  moor  and  among  the  rugged  mountains;  it 
was  strengthened  and  sweetened  by  communion 
with  sheep  and  dogs  and  cattle,  with  stars  and  winds 
and  stormy  skies.  He  was  disciplined  by  sharp  suf- 
fering and  bitter  disappointments.  And  he  became 
to  all  who  knew  him  a  tower  of  strength,  a  sure 
refuge,  a  strong  city,  and  the  shadow  of  a  great 
rock  in  a  weary  land.  As  a  shepherd-boy  among 
the  hills  he  learned  to  read  his  Greek  Testament; 
and,  later  on,  he  became  tutor  at  the  Castle  Graham. 
It  was  his  business  in  life  to  instruct  little  Davie, 
the  younger  son  of  Lord  Morven;  and  he  had  his 
own  way  of  doing  it. 

*Davie,'  he  said  one  day,  'there  is  One  who  un- 
derstands every  boy,  and  understands  each  separate 
boy  as  well  as  if  there  were  no  other  boy  in  the 
whole  world.' 

'Tell  me  who  it  is !'  demanded  Davie. 

That  is  what  I  have  to  teach  you;  mere  telling 
is  not  much  use.  Telling  is  what  makes  people 
think  they  know  when  they  do  not,  and  makes  them 
foolish.' 


Michael  Faraday's  Text  191 

'Well,  what  is  his  name?' 

*I  will  not  tell  you  that  just  yet;  for  then  you 
would  think  that  you  knew  Him  when  you  knew 
next  to  nothing  about  Him.  Look  here!  Look  at 
this  book!'  He  pulled  from  his  pocket  a  copy  of 
Boethius.  'Look  at  the  name  on  the  back  of  it; 
it  is  the  name  of  the  man  who  wrote  that  book.' 

Davie  spelled  it  out. 

'Now  you  know  all  about  the  book,  don't  you?' 

'No,  sir,  I  don't  know  anything  about  it.' 

'Well,  then,  my  father's  name  is  Robert  Grant; 
you  know  now  what  a  good  man  he  is!' 

'No,  I  don't!'  replied  Davie. 

And  so  Donal  led  Davie  to  see  that  to  know  the 
name  of  Jesus,  and  to  know  about  Jesus  is  not  to 
know  Jesus. 

*I  know  Him!'  cried  Faraday  in  triumph. 

George  Macdonald  makes  Faraday's  text  the 
master-passion  of  his  hero's  life  to  the  last.  All 
through  the  adventures  recorded  in  the  book,  Donal 
Grant  behaves  like  a  man  who  is  very  sure  of  God. 
7  know  Him,'  he  seems  to  say.  'I  know  Him.' 
And  the  closing  sentences  of  the  story  tell  us  that 
'Donal  is  still  a  present  power  of  heat  and  light  in 
the  town  of  Auchars.  He  wears  the  same  solemn 
look,  the  same  hovering  smile.  That  look  and  that 
smile  say  to  those  who  can  read  them,  "I  know 
whom  I  have  believed."  His  life  is  hid  with  Christ 
in  God;  he  has  no  anxiety  about  anything;  God  is, 
and  all  is  well.' 


192  A  Handful  of  Stars 

VI 

7  know  whom  I  have  believed/ 

Pascal  had  the  words  engraved  upon  his  seal; 
Canon  Ainger  left  instructions  that  they  should  be 
inscribed  on  his  tomb  at  Darley  Abbey;  but,  like 
Donal  Grant,  Michael  Faraday  wove  them  into  the 
very  warp  and  woof,  the  fiber  and  fabric  of  his 
daily  life. 

'Speculations !'  he  cried  in  dismay,  'speculations ! 
I  have  none!  I  am  resting  on  certainties!  For  I 
know  whom  I  have  believed  and  am  persuaded  that 
He  is  able  to  keep  that  which  I  have  committed  unto 
Him  against  that  day!' 

Happy  the  heads  that,  in  the  soul's  last  straits, 
find  themselves  pillowed  serenely  there! 


XVII 
JANET  DEMPSTER'S  TEXT 


Sitting  here  in  my  pleasaimce  on  the  lawn,  sur- 
rounded by  a  riot  of  hollyhocks,  foxgloves,  roses, 
geraniums,  and  other  English  flowers  that  she  de- 
scribed so  vividly,  and  loved  so  well,  I  find  myself 
celebrating  in  my  own  way  the  hundredth  anniver- 
sary of  the  birth  of  George  Eliot,  Lying  open  be- 
side me  on  the  garden-seat  is  a  very  well-worn  copy 
of  Janet's  Repentance.  It  has  been  read  many  times, 
and  must  be  read  again  to-day.  For  even  those  who 
cannot  go  as  far  as  Dr.  Marcus  Dods  in  pronounc- 
ing it  'one  of  the  greatest  religious  books  ever  writ- 
ten' will  at  least  agree  that  in  religious  feeling, 
spiritual  insight  and  evangelical  intensity,  it  is 
among  the  most  noble  and  most  notable  of  our 
English  classics.  The  pity  of  it  is  that,  long  before 
the  book  was  written,  its  brilliant  authoress  had 
drifted  away  from  that  simple  and  majestic  faith 
which  she  so  tenderly  portrays.  Indeed,  I  have 
sometimes  fancied  that  she  wrote  of  Janet  with  a 
great  wistfulness  in  her  heart.  She  seems  to  have 
felt  that  if,  in  the  straits  of  her  soul,  she  had  found 
her  storm-tossed  spirit  in  communion  with  person- 

193 


194  A  Handful  of  Stars 

alities  like  those  by  whom  Janet  was  surrounded  in 
the  day  of  her  distress,  her  spiritual  pilgrimage 
might  have  been  a  sunnier  one.  But  she  drifted. 
No  other  word  will  describe  the  process.  Some 
powerful  but  sensitive  minds,  like  that  of  Goethe — 
with  whose  works  she  was  so  familiar — have  been 
driven  or  torn  from  their  anchorage  by  some  sudden 
and  desolating  calamity;  but  with  George  Eliot  it 
was  quite  otherwise.  She  was  a  gentle  English  girl, 
born  on  a  farm,  and  passionately  attached  to  the 
quiet  beauty  of  the  countryside.  She  delighted  in 
the  village  green,  the  rectory  garden,  the  fields  wav- 
ing with  golden  buttercups,  and  the  shady  woods  in 
which  the  primroses  twinkled.  She  loved  to  watch 
the  poppies  tossing  in  the  corn,  the  wind  sweeping 
over  the  red  sea  of  clover,  and  the  hyacinths  nod- 
ding on  the  banks  of  the  silvery  stream.  The  smell 
of  the  hay  and  the  song  of  the  birds  and  the  life 
of  the  fields  were  her  ceaseless  satisfaction  and  re- 
freshment. Perhaps,  as  she  wandered  about  those 
winding  lanes  and  lonely  bridle-paths,  she  became 
too  contemplative,  too  introspective,  too  much  ad- 
dicted to  the  analysis  of  frames  and  feelings.  Per- 
haps, dwelling  so  exclusively  on  the  abstract  and  the 
ideal,  her  fresh  young  spirit  became  unfitted  for  its 
rude  impact  with  the  actual  and  the  real.  Perhaps, 
too,  she  was  unfortunate  in  respect  of  the  par- 
ticular specimens  of  the  evangelical  faith  that  came 
under  her  notice.  Perhaps !  At  any  rate,  she  came 
at  length  into  daily  contact  with  men  and  women, 


Janet  Dempster's  Text  195 

and  her  girlish  faith  reeled  under  the  shock.  It  is 
one  of  the  most  grievous  tragedies  of  the  spiritual 
realm  that  conscience  often  finds  the  sunny  climate 
of  an  ardent  evangelism  singularly  enervating.  The 
emotional  side  of  one's  nature  luxuriates  in  an  at- 
mosphere in  which  the  ethical  side  becomes  languid 
and  relaxed.  A  man  must  be  very  careful,  as  Mr. 
Gladstone  once  incisively  observed,  to  prevent  his 
religion  from  damaging  his  morality.  The  simple- 
minded  people  with  whom  this  sharp-witted  and 
fresh-spirited  young  Englishwoman  met  had  not 
fortified  themselves  against  that  insidious  peril. 
One  woman  told  a  lie  and  the  offense  was  sheeted 
home  to  her.  'Ah,  well,'  she  replied,  in  a  non- 
chalant and  easy  way,  7  do  not  feel  that  I  have 
grieved  the  Spirit  much!'  George  Eliot  was  hor- 
rified. She  saw,  to  her  disgust,  that  strong  religious 
feeling  could  consist  with  flagrant  dishonor.  Her 
finely  poised  and  sensitive  soul  experienced  a  revolt 
and  a  rebound.  She  changed  none  of  her  opinions, 
yet  she  changed  the  entire  attitude  of  her  mind; 
and,  with  the  passage  of  time,  the  new  attitude  pro- 
duced new  ideas.  She  had  not  quarreled  with  the 
faith  of  her  childhood;  she  simply  lost  her  love  for 
it.  Her  anchor  relinquished  its  hold,  and,  almost  im- 
perceptibly, she  drifted.  'She  glided  out  of  the  faith,' 
as  Principal  Fairbairn  so  expressively  puts  it,  'as 
easily  and  as  softly  as  if  she  had  been  a  ship  obeying 
wind  and  tide,  and  her  faith  a  sea  that  opened  si- 
lently  before   and   closed   noiselessly  behind   her.' 


196  A  Handful  of  Stars 

Wherefore  let  all  those  who  name  the  name  of 
Christ  depart  from  iniquity!  For  if,  through  any- 
glaring  inconsistency  between  my  faith  and  my  be- 
havior, I  offend  one  of  these  little  ones  that  believe 
in  Him,  it  were  better,  so  the  Master  Himself  de- 
clared, that  a  millstone  were  hanged  about  my  neck 
and  that  I  were  cast  into  the  depths  of  the  sea. 

n 

Now,  in  the  story  that  lies  open  on  the  garden- 
seat  beside  me,  all  the  characters  are  very  religious 
people.  Yet  they  are  divided  sharply  into  two 
classes.  There  are  the  very  religious  people  who 
are  all  the  worse  for  their  religion,  and  there  are 
the  very  religious  people  who  are  all  the  better  for 
it.  Mr.  Dempster  is  a  very  religious  man.  In  the 
opening  sentence  of  the  story,  the  first  sentence  in 
the  book,  he  acknowledges  his  indebtedness  to  his 
Creator.  He  is  a  very  religious  man — and  a 
drunkard!  Mr.  Budd  is  also  a  very  religious  man. 
Indeed,  he  is  warden  at  the  Parish  Church.  'He  is 
a  small,  sleek-headed  bachelor  of  five  and  forty, 
whose  scandalous  life  has  long  furnished  his  more 
moral  neighbors  with  an  afterdinner  joke.'  But 
a  very  religious  man  is  Mr.  Budd!  Mrs.  Linnett 
is  a  very  religious  woman.  She  dotes  on  religious 
biography.  'On  taking  up  the  biography  of  a  cele- 
brated preacher,  she  immediately  turns  to  the  end 
to  see  what  he  died  of,'  and  she  likes  the  book  all 


Janet  Dempster's  Text  197 

the  better  if  a  sinister  element  enters  into  its  com- 
position. Mrs.  Linnett  is  a  very  religious  woman 
— and  a  gossip!  We  are  introduced  to  a  whole 
group  of  such  characters — men  and  women  who  are 
very  religious,  but  who  are  none  the  better  for  their 
religion. 

And,  side  by  side  with  these  unamiable  figures, 
are  a  set  of  people,  equally  religious,  whose  charac- 
ters are  immeasurably  sweetened  and  strengthened 
by  their  religion.  It  is  not  that  they  profess  an- 
other faith,  attend  another  church,  or  spend  lives 
remote  from  the  affairs  with  which  the  others  have 
to  do.  As  George  Eliot  herself  pointed  out,  when 
the  publisher  hesitated  to  commit  himself  to  this 
manuscript,  it  was  not  a  case  of  one  religion  against 
another,  or  of  one  creed  against  another,  or  of  one 
church  against  another,  or  even  of  one  minister 
against  another.  The  members  of  this  second 
group  move  in  the  same  environment  as  do  the 
members  of  the  first ;  Sunday  by  Sunday  they  make 
their  way  to  the  self-same  sanctuaries;  yet  every 
day  they  grow  in  gentleness,  in  thought  fulness,  in 
kindness,  and  in  all  those  graces  of  behavior  that 
constitute  the  charm  of  lovable  and  helpful  lives. 
In  this  attractive  group  we  find  Mr.  Jerome,  Mr, 
Tryan,  and  little  Mrs.  Petti  fer. 

It  is,  of  course,  an  old  story,  vividly  and  start- 
lingly  retold.  The  same  cause  will  produce  dia- 
metrically opposite  effects.  The  sun  that  softens 
the  wax  hardens  the  clay.    The  benefit  that  I  derive 


1 98  A  Handful  of  Stars 

from  my  religion,  and  the  enjoyment  that  it  af- 
fords me,  must  depend  upon  the  response  that  I 
make  to  it.  The  rays  of  hght  that  fade  my  coat 
add  a  warmer  blush  to  the  petals  of  the  rose.  Why? 
My  coat  does  not  want  the  light  and  makes  no  re- 
sponse to  it ;  the  rose  cannot  bloom  without  the  light 
and  drinks  in  the  soft  rays  as  the  source  of  all  its 
beauty.  Under  the  influence  of  the  sunshine,  the 
violets  in  the  vase  droop  and  become  noisome;  the 
living  lilies  under  my  window  unfold  and  assume 
an  even  statelier  grace.  It  is  all  a  matter  of  re- 
sponse. Religion  was  always  beating  upon  the  lives 
of  Mr.  Dempster  and  Mr.  Budd  and  Mrs.  Linnett, 
as  the  sunlight  beats  upon  the  coat  and  the  cut- 
flowers.  They  did  not  open  their  hearts  to  it ;  they 
made  no  eager  response  to  it;  it  was  a  thing  that 
shone  upon  the  surface,  and  that  was  all.  Their 
lives  consequently  wilted  and  shriveled  and  grew 
less  beautiful.  They  were  like  violets  made  vile  by 
the  very  light  that  was  designed  to  make  them  lovely. 
Mr.  Tryan,  Mr.  Jerome  and  Mrs.  Petti fer,  on  the 
other  hand,  opened  their  hearts  to  the  love  of  God 
as  the  rose  opens  its  petals  to  the  light  of  the  sun. 
Their  religion  was  a  revelry  to  them.  So  far  from 
its  merely  beating  upon  the  surface,  as  the  sunlight 
beats  upon  the  surface  of  the  coat,  it  saturated  the 
very  depths  of  their  being.  They  were  like  the  lilies 
under  my  window ;  the  rays  that  withered  the  violets 
in  the  vase  only  make  them  more  graceful  and  more 
fair. 


Janet  Dempster's  Text  199 

III 

Here,  then,  are  the  two  groups;  and  the  central 
scene  of  the  story  is  the  transfer  of  the  principal 
character  from  the  one  group  to  the  other.  Janet 
Dempster,  the  wife  of  Robert  Dempster,  is,  like 
her  husband,  very  religious,  but,  like  him,  she  is 
none  the  better  for  her  religion.  But  matters  at 
home  hurry  to  a  climax.  Dempster  drinks  more 
and  more,  and,  drinking,  goes  from  bad  to  worse. 
He  treats  his  wife,  first  with  coldness,  and  then 
with  cruelty.  At  length  comes  the  dreadful  and 
dramatic  scene  that  readers  of  the  story  will  never 
erase  from  their  memories.  In  a  fit  of  drunken 
savagery  he  burst  into  her  room  at  midnight.  He 
drags  her  from  her  bed ;  pushes  her  down  the  stairs 
and  along  the  hall;  and  then,  opening  the  front 
door,  he  hurls  her  by  sheer  brute  force  out  into  the 
street.  Here  is  George  Eliot's  picture :  'The  stony 
street;  the  bitter  north-east  wind  and  darkness;  and 
in  the  midst  of  them  a  tender  woman  thrust  out 
from  her  husband's  home  in  her  thin  nightdress,  the 
harsh  wind  cutting  her  naked  feet  and  driving  her 
long  hair  away  from  her  half-clad  bosom,  where  the 
poor  heart  is  crushed  with  anguish  and  despair.' 
It  is  in  these  desperate  straits  that  religion  presents 
itself  to  her  view  in  an  entirely  fresh  guise. 

In  her  extremity,  poor  Janet  thinks  of  little  Mrs. 
Petti fer — a  member  of  that  other  group,  the  group 
that  resembles  the  lilies  under  my  window,  the  group 


200  A  Handful  of  Stars 

of  kindly  souls  whose  lives  have  been  irradiated  and 
beautified  by  their  faith.  She  taps  at  the  cottage 
window;  Mrs.  Petti fer  hastens  to  the  door;  and,  as 
soon  as  that  frightened  little  body  can  recover  from 
the  first  shock  of  her  astonishment,  she  draws  Janet 
into  the  room  and  then  into  the  warm  bed.  Having 
composed  and  soothed  her,  she  slips  out  of  bed 
again,  lights  the  fire  and  makes  a  cup  of  tea.  In 
this  guise,  religion  presents  itself  to  Janet! 

But  she  needs  more!  A  roof  to  shelter  her,  a 
fire  to  warm  her  and  a  friend  to  caress  and  mother 
her — these  are  very  welcome;  but  her  heart  is  cry- 
ing out  with  a  yet  deeper  hunger.  She  feels  that 
she,  a  poor  weak  woman,  is  standing  against  a  world 
that  is  too  hard  and  too  strong  and  too  terrible  for 
her.  What  can  she  do  ?  Where  can  she  go  ?  Little 
Mrs.  Pettifer  urges  her  to  open  her  heart  to  Mr. 
Tryan,  the  minister;  and  to  Mr.  Tryan  she  accord- 
ingly goes.  And  in  Mr.  Tryan  she  finds  ready  help- 
fulness, warm  sympathy,  and  a  perfect  understand- 
ing of  her  inmost  need.  Her  life,  she  feels,  is  but 
a  tangled  skein.  To  convince  her  that  he  is  no 
stranger  to  such  conditions,  Mr.  Tryan  tells  her  of 
his  own  struggles  and  distresses.  He  has  not  stood 
aloof  from  the  battle,  looking  on;  he  has  been  in  the 
thick  of  the  fight — and  has  been  wounded.  She 
feels  for  him,  and,  in  feeling  for  him,  becomes  con- 
scious that  the  healing  of  her  own  hurt  has  already 
begun.  In  this  guise,  religion  presents  itself  to 
Janet  Dempster! 


Janet  Dempster's  Text  201 

In  the  person  of  Mrs.  Pettifer  and  in  the  person 
of  Mr.  Tryan,  religion  became  incarnate  under  the 
eyes  of  poor  Janet.  In  the  person  of  Mrs.  Pettifer 
and  in  the  person  of  Mr.  Tryan,  'the  word  became 
flesh.' 

But  Janet  still  needs  more!  Mrs.  Pettifer  shel- 
ters and  soothes  her  body;  Mr.  Tryan  comforts  and 
strengthens  her  mind;  but  her  soul,  her  very  self, 
what  is  she  to  do  with  thatf  She  feels  that  she 
cannot  trust  herself  with  herself.  Is  there  no  still 
greater  incarnation  of  the  faith? 

Mrs.  Pettifer  is  the  Incarnation  Motherly. 

Mr.  Tryan  is  the  Incarnation  Ministerial. 

But,  in  her  heart  of  hearts,  there  is  still  a  deep 
and  bitter  cry.  Mrs.  Pettifer  can  comfort;  she 
cannot  keep  through  all  the  days  to  come!  Mr. 
Tryan  can  counsel;  he  cannot  guard  from  future 
sins  and  sorrows!  To  whom  can  she  commit  her- 
self? It  is  from  Mr.  Tryan's  lips  that  the  answer 
comes.  The  words  fall  upon  her  broken  spirit,  as 
she  herself  tells  us,  like  rain  upon  the  mown  grass: 

'COME  UNTO  ME,  ALL  YE  THAT  LABOR 
AND  ARE  HEAVY-LADEN,  AND  I  WILL 
GIVE  YOU  REST!' 

And  once  more  the  solution  is  an  incarnation! 
When  Janet's  storm-beaten  body  needed  fire  and 
food  and  shelter,  religion  became  incarnate  in  the 
person  of  Mrs.  Pettifer.  When  Janet's  distracted 
mind  needed  counsel  and  guidance,  religion  became 
incarnate  in  the  person  of  Mr.  Tryan.     But  when 


202  A  Handful  of  Stars 

Janet's  sin-laden  soul  cried  out  for  a  Saviour  Who 
could  deliver  her  from  the  stains  of  the  past,  and 
keep  her  amidst  the  perils  of  the  future,  religion 
became  incarnate  in  the  Person  of  the  Son  of  God  I 

The  Incarnation  Motherly! 

The  Incarnation  Ministerial! 

The  Incarnation  Mediatorial! 

'Come  unto  Me!'  the  Saviour  said.  And  Janet 
came !  She  was  a  changed  woman !  'A  delicious 
hope,'  George  Eliot  tells  us,  'the  hope  of  purification 
and  inward  peace,  had  entered  into  Janet's  soul,  and 
made  it  spring-time  there  as  well  as  in  the  outer 
world!'  'She  felt'  we  are  told  again,  'like  a  little 
child  whose  hand  is  firmly  grasped  by  its  father,  as 
its  frail  limbs  make  their  way  over  the  rough 
ground:  if  it  should  stumble,  the  father  will  not  let 
it  go.'  She  had  opened  her  heart  to  the  living  Lord 
as  the  living  flowers  open  their  petals  to  the  glad 
sunlight;  and  He  had  become  the  strength  of  her 
life  and  her  portion  for  ever.  Temptation  came, 
fierce  and  sudden  and  terrible;  but  He  was  always 
there  and  always  able  to  deliver. 

IV 

In  the  correspondence  with  her  publisher  as  to 
whether  or  not  the  manuscript  should  be  printed, 
George  Eliot  assures  him  that  the  characters  are 
drawn  from  life.  And,  in  the  closing  paragraph 
of  the  story,  she  tells  us  that  Janet — an  old  woman 


Janet  Dempster's  Text  203 

whose  once-black  hair  is  now  quite  gray — is  living 
still.  But  Mr.  Tryan,  she  says,  is  dead;  and  she 
describes  the  simple  gravestone  in  Milby  churchyard. 
'But,'  she  adds,  'there  is  another  memorial  of  Edgar 
Tryan,  which  hears  a  fuller  record;  it  is  Janet 
Dempster,  rescued  from  self-despair,  strengthened 
with  Divine  hopes,  and  nozv  looking  hack  on  years 
of  purity  and  helpful  lahor.  The  man  who  has  left 
such  a  memorial  behind  him  must  have  heen  one 
whose  heart  beat  with  true  compassion  and  whose 
lips  were  moved  by  fervent  faith.'  It  is  the  last 
sentence  in  the  book;  and  every  minister,  as  he 
closes  the  covers  and  lays  it  aside,  will  covet  for 
himself  some  such  incarnate  monument.  Only  as  a 
preacher's  preaching  is  'made  flesh'  in  that  way, 
will  it  be  understood  and  appreciated  by  the  genera- 
tions following. 


XVIII 
CATHERINE  BOOTH'S  TEXT 


Who  that  was  in  London  on  October  14,  1890,  can 
forget  the  extraordinary  scenes  that  marked  the 
funeral  of  Catherine  Booth?  It  was  a  day  of  uni- 
versal grief.  The  whole  nation  mourned.  For  Mrs. 
Booth  was  one  of  the  most  striking  personalities, 
and  one  of  the  mightiest  spiritual  forces,  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  To  the  piety  of  a  Saint  Teresa 
she  added  the  passion  of  a  Josephine  Butler,  the 
purpose  fulness  of  an  Elizabeth  Fry,  and  the  practi- 
cal sagacity  of  a  Frances  Willard.  The  greatest  in 
the  land  revered  her,  trusted  her,  consulted  her,  de- 
ferred to  her.  The  letters  that  passed  between 
Catherine  Booth  and  Queen  Victoria  are  among  the 
most  rernarkable  documents  in  the  literature  of  cor- 
respondence. Mr.  Gladstone  attached  the  greatest 
weight  to  her  judgment  and  convictions.  Bishop 
Lightfoot,  one  of  the  most  distinguished  scholars 
of  his  time,  has  testified  to  the  powerful  influence 
which  she  exerted  over  him.  And,  whilst  the  loftiest 
among  men  honored  her,  the  lowliest  loved  her. 

Such  strong  lives  have  their  secrets.    Mrs.  Booth 
had  hers.     Her  secret  was  a  text.     As  a  child  she 

204 


Catherine  Booth's  Text  205 

learned  it  by  heart ;  as  a  girl  she  pinned  her  faith 
to  the  promise  it  enshrined;  amidst  the  stress  and 
strain  of  a  stormy  and  eventful  life  she  trusted  it 
implicitly;  and,  with  all  the  tenacity  of  her  keen, 
clear  intellect,  she  clung  to  it  at  the  last.  In  the 
standard  Life  of  Catherine  Booth — a  huge  work  of 
a  thousand  pages — four  chapters  are  devoted  to  the 
scenes  at  the  deathbed.    And  then  we  read : 

'The  lips  moved  as  though  desiring  to  speak. 
Unable,  however,  to  do  so,  the  dying  woman 
pointed  to  a  wall-text,  which  had  for  a  long  time 
been  placed  opposite  to  her,  so  that  her  eyes  could 
rest  upon  it. 


MY  GRACE 

IS 

SUFFICIENT  FOR  THEE 


It  was  taken  down  and  placed  near  her  on  the  bed. 
But  it  was  no  longer  needed.  The  promise  had 
been  completely  fulfilled.' 

'That,'  said  a  speaker  at  one  of  the  great  Me- 
morial Meetings  in  London,  some  of  which  were 
attended  by  man}^  thousand  people,  'that  was  her 
text!'  And,  as  so  often  happens,  her  text  explains 
her  character. 

For,  considered  apart  from  the  text,  the  charac- 
ter is  an  insoluble  enigma.  It  is  like  a  consequence 
without  a  cause.    I  was  talking  a  week  or  two  ago 


2o6  A  Handful  of  Stars 

with  an  old  man,  who,  in  Australia's  earlier  days, 
did  a  good  deal  of  pioneering  in  the  heart  of  the 
bush. 

'Once,'  he  told  me,  'soon  after  I  first  came  out, 
I  really  thought  that  I  had  reached  the  end  of  every- 
thing. I  was  hopelessly  lost.  My  strength  was 
utterly  exhausted.  I  had  gone  as  far  as  I  could  go. 
The  country  around  me  was  flat  and  dry ;  my  thirst 
was  a  perfect  agony;  and  my  poor  dog  followed 
at  my  heels,  her  tongue  hanging  out,  and  her  sides 
panting  pitifully.  We  had  not  seen  water  for  sev- 
eral days.  I  sat  down  under  a  great  gum-tree, 
hoping  that  an  hour's  rest  would  bring  me  fresh 
heart  and  new  vigor.  I  must  have  fallen  asleep. 
When  I  awoke.  Fan  was  standing  near  me,  wagging 
her  tail.  She  seemed  contented  and  satisfied;  her 
tongue  no  longer  protruded.  An  hour  or  two  later, 
I  suddenly  missed  her;  she  had  vanished  in  the 
scrub.  She  was  away  about  twenty  minutes.  I 
determined  to  watch  her.  Presently  she  set  out 
again,  and  I  followed.  Surely  enough,  she  had 
found  a  tiny  spring  in  a  slight  hollow  about  half  a 
mile  away;  and  by  that  spring  we  were  saved.' 

I  have  seen  something  like  this  in  a  higher  realm. 
I  recall,  for  example,  Richard  Cecil's  story  of  his 
conversion.  Richard  Cecil — the  friend  and  biog- 
rapher of  John  Newton — was  one  of  the  great  evan- 
gelical forces  of  the  eighteenth  century,  as  Catherine 
Booth  was  of  the  nineteenth.  But,  in  his  early  days, 
Richard    Cecil    was    a    skeptic.      He    called    him- 


Catherine  Booth's  Text  207 

self  an  infidel,  but  he  was  honest  in  his  infidelity. 
He  could  face  facts;  and  the  man  who  can  look 
facts  fairly  in  the  face  is  not  far  from  the  kingdom 
of  God.  Richard  Cecil  was  not,  his  skepticism  not- 
withstanding. 'I  see,'  he  says,  in  telling  us  of  the 
line  of  thought  that  he  pursued  as  he  lay  in  bed 
one  night,  *I  see  two  unquestionable  facts.'  And 
what  were  they?    They  both  concerned  his  mother. 

'First,  my  mother  is  greatly  afflicted  in  circum- 
stances, body  and  mind;  and  I  see  that  she  cheer- 
fully bears  up  under  all  her  suffering  by  the  support 
that  she  derives  from  constantly  retiring  to  her 
quiet  room  and  her  Bible. 

Second,  my  mother  has  a  secret  spring  of  com- 
fort of  which  I  know  nothing;  while  I,  who  give 
an  unbounded  loose  to  my  appetites,  and  seek 
pleasure  by  every  means,  seldom  or  never  find  it. 
If,  however,  there  is  any  such  secret  in  religion, 
why  may  I  not  attain  to  it  as  well  as  my  mother? 
I  will  immediately  seek  it !' 

He  did;  and  those  who  are  familiar  with  his  life- 
story  know  of  the  triumphant  result  of  that  quest. 
It  was  precisely  so  with  Mrs.  Booth.  Her  children 
knew  that,  like  the  bushman's  collie,  she  found  re- 
freshment at  some  secret  spring.  Later  on,  she  told 
them  of  the  text  and  led  them,  one  by  one,  to  the 
fountains  of  grace.  My  grace  is  sufficient  for  thee/ 
And  when,  at  last,  the  avenues  of  speech  and  hear- 
ing were  closed,  they  hung  the  golden  words  before 
her  clouding  eyes.     Again  she  greeted  them  with 


2o8  A  Handful  of  Stars 

rapture,  and,  with  unwavering  confidence,  pointed 
her  children  to  their  deathless  message. 


II 

In  his  Grace  Abounding,  John  Bunyan  tells  us 
that  there  was  a  period  in  his  spiritual  history  when 
his  soul  was  like  a  pair  of  scales.  It  partook  of 
three  phases.  At  one  time  the  right-hand  balance 
was  down  and  the  left-hand  empty  and  high;  then 
for  awhile  they  were  exactly  and  evenly  poised ;  and, 
at  the  last,  the  left-hand  balance  dropped  and  that 
on  the  right-hand  was  swinging  in  the  air. 

At  the  first  of  these  stages  he  was  being  tormented 
about  the  unpardonable  sin.  He  reminded  himself 
that,  for  Esau,  there  was  no  place  for  repentance; 
and  he  felt  that  there  was  none  for  him.  The  scale 
in  which  he  laid  his  despair  was  heavily  weighted; 
the  scale  in  which  he  placed  his  hope  was  empty ! 

And  the  second  stage — the  stage  that  leveled  the 
balances?  'One  morning,'  he  says,  *as  I  was  at 
prayer,  and  trembling  with  fear,  lest  there  should 
be  no  word  of  God  to  help  me,  that  piece  of  a  sen- 
tence darted  in  upon  me:  My  grace  is  sufficient! 
At  this  I  felt  some  stay  as  if  there  might  yet  be  hope. 
About  a  fortnight  before,  I  had  been  looking  at  this 
ver}^  scripture,  but  I  then  thought  that  it  could  bring 
me  no  comfort,  and  I  threw  down  the  book  in  a  pet. 
I  thought  that  the  grace  was  not  large  enough  for 
me !  no,  not  large  enough !     But  now  it  was  as  if 


Catherine  Booth's  Text  209 

the  arms  of  grace  were  so  wide  that  they  could  en- 
close not  only  me  but  many  more  besides.  And  so 
this  about  the  sufficiency  of  grace  and  that  about 
Esau  finding  no  place  for  repentance  would  be  like 
a  pair  of  scales  within  my  mind.  Sometimes  one 
end  would  be  uppermost  and  sometimes  again  the 
other;  according  to  which  would  be  my  peace  or 
trouble.' 

And  the  third  stage — the  triumphant  stage? 
Bunyan  felt  that  the  scales  were  merely  level  be- 
cause, in  the  balance  that  contained  the  hope,  he  had 
thrown  only  four  of  the  six  words  that  make  up  the 
text.  'My  grace  is  sufficient';  he  had  no  doubt  about 
that,  and  it  gave  him  encouragement.  But  'for  thee'; 
he  felt  that,  if  only  he  could  add  those  words  to 
the  others,  it  would  turn  the  scales  completely.  'I 
had  hope,'  he  says,  'yet  because  the  "for  thee"  was 
left  out,  I  was  not  contented,  but  prayed  to  God 
for  that  also.  Wherefore,  one  day,  when  I  was  in 
a  meeting  of  God's  people,  full  of  sadness  and  ter- 
ror, these  words  did  with  great  power  suddenly 
break  in  upon  me;  My  grace  is  sufficient  for  thee. 
My  grace  is  sufficient  for  thee.  My  grace  is  suf- 
ficient for  thee,  three  times  together.  And  oh !  me- 
thought  that  every  word  was  a  mighty  word  unto 
me;  as  My  and  grace,  and  sufficient,  and  for  thee; 
they  were  then,  and  sometimes  are  still,  far  bigger 
than  all  others.  Then,  at  last,  that  about  Esau  find- 
ing no  place  for  repentance  began  to  wax  weak  and 
withdravi^  and  vanish,  and  this  about  the  sufficiency 


2IO  A  Handful  of  Stars 

of  grace  prevailed  with  peace  and  joy/  And  so 
the  issue  was  reversed;  the  scale  that  held  the  hope 
overweighed  completely  the  scale  that  held  the 
despair. 

If  it  were  not  that  others  have  passed  through 
an  identically  similar  experience,  we  should  feel  in- 
clined to  marvel  at  Bunyan's  reluctance  to  cast  into 
the  balances  the  tail  of  the  text :  My  grace  is  suf- 
ficient— for  thee!  It  seems  strange,  I  say,  that 
Bunyan  should  have  grasped  with  such  confidence 
the  four  words  and  then  boggled  at  the  other  two. 
And  yet  it  is  always  easier  to  believe  that  there  is  a 
Saviour  for  the  world  than  to  believe  that  there  is  a 
Saviour  for  me.    It  is  easy  to  believe  that 

There  is  grace  enough  for  thousands 
Of  new  worlds  as  great  as  this; 

There  is  room  for  fresh  creations 
In  that  upper  home  of  bliss; 

but  it  is  much  harder  to  believe  that  there  is  grace 
and  room  for  me.  Martin  Luther  believed  im- 
plicitly and  preached  confidently  that  Christ  died 
for  all  mankind,  long  before  he  could  persuade  him- 
self that  Christ  died  for  Martin  Luther.  John 
Wesley  crossed  the  Atlantic  that  he  might  proclaim 
the  forgiveness  of  sins  to  the  Indians;  but  it  was 
not  until  he  was  verging  upon  middle  life  that  he 
realized  the  possibility  of  the  forgiveness  of  his 
own. 

It  is  all  very  illogical,  of  course,  and  very  absurd. 


Catherine  Booth's  Test  211 

If  we  can  accept  the  four  words,  why  not  accept 
all  six?  If  we  credit  the  head  of  the  text,  why  cavil 
at  the  tail?  Sometimes  the  absurdity  of  such  ir- 
rational behavior  will  break  upon  a  man  and  set 
him  laughing  at  his  own  stupidity.  Mr.  Spurgeon 
had  some  such  experience.  'Gentlemen,'  he  said, 
one  Friday  afternoon,  in  an  address  to  his  students, 
'Gentlemen,  there  are  many  passages  of  Scripture 
which  you  will  never  understand  until  some  trying 
or  singular  experience  shall  interpret  them  to  you. 
The  other  evening  I  was  riding  home  after  a  heavy 
day's  work ;  I  was  very  wearied  and  sore  depressed ; 
and,  swiftly  and  suddenly  as  a  lightning  flash,  that 
text  laid  hold  on  me :  My  grace  is  sufficient  for 
thee!  On  reaching  home,  I  looked  it  up  in  the 
original,  and  at  last  it  came  to  me  in  this  way. 
My  grace  is  sufficient  for  Thee!  "Why,"  I  said 
to  myself,  "1  should  think  it  is!"  and  I  burst  out 
laughing.  I  never  fully  understood  what  the  holy 
laughter  of  Abraham  was  like  until  then.  It  seemed 
to  make  unbelief  so  absurd.  It  was  as  though  some 
little  fish,  being  very  thirsty,  was  troubled  about 
drinking  the  river  dry ;  and  Father  Thames  said : 
"Drink  away,  little  fish,  my  stream  is  sufficient  for 
thee!"  Or  as  if  a  little  mouse  in  the  granaries  of 
Egypt,  after  seven  years  of  plenty,  feared  lest  it 
should  die  of  famine,  and  Joseph  said:  "Cheer  up, 
little  mouse,  my  granaries  are  sufficient  for  thee!" 
Again  I  imagined  a  man  away  up  yonder  on  the 
mountain  saying  to  himself  :   "I  fear  I  shall  exhaust 


212  A  Handful  of  Staxs 

all  the  oxygen  in  the  atmosphere."  But  the  earth 
cries:  "Breathe  away,  O  man,  and  fill  thy  lungs; 
my  atmosphere  is  sufficient  for  thee!"  '  John  Bun- 
yan  enjoyed  a  moment's  merriment  of  the  same 
kind  when  he  threw  the  last  two  words  into  the 
scale  and  saw  his  despair  dwindle  into  insignificance 
on  the  instant. 

Ill 

Some  such  thought  shines  through  the  passage 
in  which  Paul  tells  us  how  the  great  words  came  to 
him.  He  was  irritated  by  his  thorn;  he  prayed  re- 
peatedly for  its  removal;  but  the  only  answer  that 
he  received  was  this :  My  grace  is  sufficient  for 
thee!  Grace  sufficient  for  a  thorn!  It  is  an  almost 
ludicrous  association  of  ideas! 

It  is  so  easy  for  Bunyan  to  believe  that  the  divine 
grace  is  sufficient  for  the  wide,  wide  world;  it  is 
so  difficult  to  realize  that  it  is  sufficient  for  him ! 

It  is  so  easy  for  Wesley  to  believe  in  the  forgive- 
ness of  sins :  it  is  so  difficult  for  him  to  believe  in  the 
forgiveness  of  his  own! 

It  is  so  easy  for  Paul  to  believe  in  the  grace  that 
is  sufficient  to  redeem  a  fallen  race :  it  is  so  diffi- 
cult for  him  to  believe  in  the  grace  that  can  fortify 
him  to  endure  his  thorn! 

And  yet,  in  a  fine  essay  on  Great  Principles  and 
Small  Duties,  Dr.  James  Martineau  has  shown  that 
it  is  the  lowliest  who  most  need  the  loftiest;  it  is 
the  tiny  thorn  that  calls  for  the  most  tremendous 


Catherine  Booth's  Text  215 

grace.  The  gravest  mistake  ever  made  by  educa- 
tionalists is,  he  says,  the  mistake  of  supposing  that 
those  who  know  httle  are  good  enough  to  teach 
those  who  know  less.  It  is  a  tragedy,  he  declares, 
when  the  master  is  only  one  stage  ahead  of  his 
pupil.  'The  ripest  scholarship,'  he  maintains,  'is 
alone  qualified  to  instruct  the  most  complete  ig- 
norance.' Dr.  Martineau  goes  on  to  show  that  a 
soul  occupied  with  great  ideas  best  performs  trivial 
duties.  And,  coming  to  the  supreme  example  of  his 
subject,  he  points  out  that  'it  was  the  peculiarity  of 
the  Saviour's  greatness,  not  that  he  stooped  to  the 
lowliest,  but  that,  without  stooping,  he  penetrated 
to  the  humblest  wants.  He  not  simply  stepped  aside 
to  look  at  the  most  ignominious  sorrows,  but  went 
directly  to  them,  and  lived  wholly  in  them;  scat- 
tered glorious  miracles  and  sacred  truths  along 
the  hidden  by-paths  and  in  the  mean  recesses  of 
existence;  serving  the  mendicant  and  the  widow, 
blessing  the  child,  healing  the  leprosy  of  body  and 
of  soul,  and  kneeling  to  wash  even  the  traitor's  feet' 
Here  is  a  strange  and  marvelous  and  beautiful  law  I 
The  loftiest  for  the  lowliest!  The  greatest  grace 
for  the  tiniest  thorn ! 

Is  it  any  wonder  that,  this  being  so,  Paul  felt 
that  his  splinter  positively  shone?  '/  will  glory  in 
it,'  he  cried,  'that  the  power  of  Christ  may  be  hil- 
letted  upon  me.'  He  feels  that  his  soul  is  like  some 
rural  hamlet  into  which  a  powerful  regiment  has- 
marched.     Every  bed  and  barn  is  occupied  by  the 


214  A  Handful  of  Stars 

soldiers.  Who  would  not  be  irritated  by  a  splinter, 
he  asks,  if  the  irritation  leads  to  such  an  inrush  of 
divine  power  and  grace?  It  is  like  the  pain  of  the 
oyster  that  is  healed  by  a  pearl. 

And  so,  with  Paul  as  with  Bunyan,  the  grace 
turns  the  scales.  It  is  better  to  have  the  pain  if 
it  brings  the  pearl.  It  is  better  to  have  a  thorn  in 
the  one  balance  if  it  brings  such  grace  into  the 
opposite  balance  that  one  is  better  off  with  the 
thorn  than  without  it.  Therein  lies  life's  deepest 
secret — the  secret  that  Catherine  Booth  and  John 
Bunyan  learned  from  the  lips  that  unfolded  it  to 
Paul.  In  The  Master's  Violin,  Myrtle  Reed  tells 
us  the  secret  of  the  music  that  the  old  man's  fingers 
wooed  from  the  Cremona.  You  have  but  to  look 
at  the  master,  she  says,  and  you  will  comprehend. 
'There  he  stands,  a  stately  figure,  gray  and  rugged, 
yet  with  a  certain  graciousness ;  simple,  kindly,  and 
yet  austere;  one  who  had  accepted  his  sorrow,  and, 
by  some  alchemy  of  the  spirit,  transmuted  it  into 
universal  compassion,  to  speak,  through  the  Cre- 
mona, to  all  who  could  understand !' 

That  is  the  secret — the  old  musician's  secret; 
Catherine  Booth's  secret;  Bunyan's  secret;  Paul's 
secret;  the  secret  of  all  who  have  learned  the  text 
by  heart! 

My  grace  is  sufficient  for  thee — the  inrush  of  the 
grace  turned  Paul's  torturing  splinter  into  a  cause 
for  life-long  thankfulness! 

My  grace  is  sufficient  for  thee — the  inrush  of  the 


Catherine  Booth's  Text  215 

grace  turned  Mrs.   Booth's  fierce  struggle  into  a 
ceaseless  song! 

My  grace  is  sufficient  for  thee!  To  the  man  who, 
like  John  Bunyan,  stands  weighing  his  gladnesses 
and  sadnesses  with  that  text  in  his  mind,  it  will 
seem  that  the  one  scale  is  overflowing  and  the  other 
empty.  For  it  is  the  glory  of  the  grace  that  It  takes 
what  sadnesses  there  are  and  transmutes  them  into 
songs  sublime. 


XIX 

UNCLE  TOM'S  TEXT 


Poor  old  Uncle  Tom  has  been  stripped  of  every- 
thing. All  that  he  counted  precious  has  vanished. 
He  has  been  torn  away  from  the  old  Kentucky 
home;  has  been  snatched  away  from  the  arms  of 
old  Aunt  Chloe;  has  been  sold  away  from  children 
and  kindred ;  and  has  fallen  into  the  merciless  hands 
of  that  vicious  slave-dealer,  Simon  Legree.  And  now 
Uncle  Tom  is  dying.  He  lies  in  the  dusty  shed,  his 
back  all  torn  and  lacerated  by  the  cruel  thongs.  All 
through  the  night  there  steal  to  his  side  the  other 
slaves  on  the  plantation,  poor  creatures  who  creep 
in  to  see  the  last  of  him,  to  bathe  his  wounds,  to 
ask  his  pardon,  or  to  kneel  in  prayer  beside  his 
tortured  frame.  With  the  morning  light  comes 
George  Shelby,  his  old  master,  to  redeem  him. 

'Is  it  possible,  is  it  possible?'  he  exclaims,  kneel- 
ing down  by  the  old  slave.  'Uncle  Tom,  my  poor, 
poor  old  friend!' 

But  Uncle  Tom  is  too  far  gone.  He  only  mur- 
murs faintly  to  himself: 

Jesus  can  make  a  dying  bed 
Feel  soft  as  downy  pillows  are. 

2l6 


Uncle  Tom's  Text  217 

*You  shan't  die;  you  mustn't  die,  nor  think  of 
it !  I've  come  to  buy  you  and  take  you  home !'  cries 
George,  with  impetuous  vehemence. 

'Oh,  Mas'r  George,  ye're  too  late.  The  Lord's 
bought  me  and  is  going  to  take  me  home — and  I 
long  to  go.     Heaven  is  better  than  old  Kentucky!' 

At  this  moment  the  sudden  flush  of  strength 
which  the  joy  of  meeting  his  young  master  had  in- 
fused into  the  dying  man  gives  way.  A  sudden 
sinking  falls  upon  him;  he  closes  his  eyes;  and 
that  mysterious  and  sublime  change  passes  over 
his  face  that  suggests  the  approach  of  other 
worlds.  He  begins  to  draw  his  breath  with  'long, 
deep  inspirations,  and  his  broad  chest  rises  and  falls 
heavily.  The  expression  of  his  face  is  that  of  a 
conqueror. 

'Who,'  he  murmurs,  'who — who — who  shall 
separate  us  from  the  love  of  Christ f  And,  with 
that  unanswerable  challenge  upon  his  quivering  lips, 
he  falls  into  his  last  long  sleep.  Severed  from  all 
that  is  dear  to  him,  there  is  yet  One  heart  from 
which  nothing  can  separate  him.  And  in  that  in- 
dissoluble tie  he  finds  strong  consolation  at  the  last. 


II 

I  was  speaking  the  other  day  to  a  lady  who  had 
known  Signor  Alessandro  Gavazzi,  'When  he  was 
in  England,'  she  told  me,  'he  used  to  come  and  stay 
at  my  father's  home,  and,  to  us  girls,  he  seemed 


2i8  A  Handful  of  Stars 

like  a  visitor  from  another  world.'  The  life  of 
Gavazzi  is  one  of  the  stirring  romances  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  Born  at  Bologna  in  1809,  he  be- 
came, at  the  age  of  fifteen,  a  Barnabite  monk.  His 
eloquence,  even  in  his  teens,  was  so  extraordinary 
that,  at  twenty,  he  was  made  Professor  of  Rhetoric 
in  the  College  of  Naples.  Some  years  afterward 
Pope  Pius  the  Ninth  sent  him  on  a  special  mission 
to  Milan  as  Chaplain-General  to  the  Patriotic 
Legion.  A  little  later,  however,  a  new  light  broke 
upon  him.  He  left  the  church  of  his  fathers  and 
devoted  his  distinguished  gifts  to  the  work  of  evan- 
gelism. In  connection  with  his  conversion,  a 
pathetic  incident  occurred.  A  superstitious  Italian 
mother  will  sometimes  hang  a  charm  around  her 
boy's  neck  to  drive  away  malignant  powers.  When 
Gavazzi  was  but  a  baby,  his  mother  placed  a  locket 
on  his  breast,  and  he  never  moved  without  it.  But 
when,  in  riper  years,  he  found  the  Saviour,  his 
mother's  gift  caused  him  great  perplexity.  As  a 
charm  he  had  no  faith  in  it;  he  relied  entirely  on 
the  grace  of  his  Lord  to  sustain  and  protect  him. 
And  yet,  for  his  mother's  sake,  he  felt  that  he  should 
like  to  wear  it.  He  solved  the  problem  by  placing 
in  the  locket  the  words  by  which  he  had  been  led 
to  Christ.  When  he  died,  an  old  man  of  eighty,  the 
locket  was  found  next  his  skin.  And,  when  they 
opened  it,  they  read :  'JVho  shall  separate  us  from 
the  love  of  Christ?  I  am  persuaded  that  neither 
death,  nor  life,  nor  angels,  nor  principalities,  nor 


Uncle  Tom's  Text  219 

powers,  nor  things  present,  nor  things  to  come,  nor 
height,  nor  depth,  nor  any  other  creature,  shall  be 
able  to  separate  us  from  the  love  of  God,  which 
is  in  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord.'  Gavazzi's  excom- 
munication nearly  broke  his  heart.  He  left  Rome 
to  wander  in  strange  lands,  the  most  frightful  ana- 
themas and  maledictions  ringing  in  his  ears.  He 
was  an  exile  and  an  outcast,  shuddering  under  the 
curse  of  the  church  that  he  had  served  so  devotedly 
and  so  long.  Yet,  after  all,  what  did  it  matter? 
He  had  found  a  love — the  love  of  Christ — that  he 
had  never  known  before;  and  from  that  all-compen- 
sating love  no  power  in  church  or  state,  in  heaven 
or  earth,  in  time  or  in  eternity,  had  power  to  tear 
him. 

Ill 

One  is  tempted  to  continue  in  this  strain.  It 
would  be  pleasant  to  speak  of  Hugh  Kennedy,  of 
Savonarola,  and  of  others  who  found  life  and  grace 
and  inspiration  in  the  text  on  which  poor  Uncle 
Tom  pillowed  his  dying  head.  The  testimony  of 
such  witnesses  is  strangely  fascinating;  their  name 
is  legion ;  we  may  yet  cite  one  or  two  of  them  before 
we  close.  Meanwhile,  we  must  pay  some  attention 
to  the  words  of  which  they  speak  so  rapturously. 
And  even  to  glance  at  them  is  to  fall  in  love  with 
them.  They  are  among  the  most  stately,  the  most 
splendid,  in  all  literature.  Macaulay,  who  read 
everything,  once  found  himself  in  Scotland  on  a  fast 


220  A  Handful  of  Stars 

day.  It  was  a  new  experience  for  him,  and  he  did 
not  altogether  enjoy  it.  'The  place,'  he  said,  'had 
all  the  appearance  of  a  Puritan  Sunday.  Every 
shop  was  shut  and  every  church  open.  I  heard  the 
worst  and  longest  sermon  that  I  ever  remember. 
Every  sentence  was  repeated  three  or  four  times 
over,  and  nothing  in  any  sentence  deserved  to  be 
said  once.  I  withdrew  my  attention  and  read  the 
Epistle  to  the  Romans.  I  was  much  struck  by  the 
eloquence  and  force  of  some  passages,  and  made  out 
the  connection  and  argument  of  some  others  which 
had  formerly  seemed  to  me  unmeaning.  I  enjoyed 
the  "Who  shall  separate  us  from  the  love  of  Christ  f" 
I  know  few  things  finer.' 

The  words  constitute  themselves  the  great- 
est challenge  ever  uttered.  Poets  and  painters 
have  gloried  in  the  conception  of  Ajax,  on  his 
lonely  rock,  defying  all  the  gods  that  be.  But 
what  is  that  compared  with  thisf  In  the  passage 
whose  sublimities  awoke  the  enthusiasm  of  Macau- 
lay,  and  delivered  him  from  insufferable  bore- 
dom, Paul  claims  to  have  reached  the  limits  of 
finality,  and  he  hurls  defiance  at  all  the  forces  of 
futurity. 

'Who  shall  separate  us  from  the  love  of  Christ f 
Death?  Life?  Angels?  Principalities?  Powers? 
Things  Present?  Things  to  Come?  Height? 
Depth?  Any  fresh  Creation?  I  am  persuaded  that 
none  of  them  can  separate  us  from  the  love  of  God 
which  is  in  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord.' 


Uncle  Tom's  Text  221 

IV 

Neither  death  nor  life  can  do  it.  Not  death — 
nor  even  life.  Both  are  formidable  forces ;  and  Paul 
knew  which  was  the  more  dangerous  of  the  two. 

So  he  died  for  his  faith.    That  is  fine — 

More  than  most  of  us  do. 
But,  say,  can  you  add  to  that  line 

That  he  lived  for  it,  too? 

When  Elizabeth  came  to  the  English  throne,  a  num- 
ber of  men  and  women,  who  were  awaiting  martyr- 
dom under  Mary,  were  liberated.  Animated  by  the 
spirit  of  Ridley  and  Latimer,  they  would  have  kissed 
the  faggots  and  embraced  the  stake.  Yet,  in  the 
years  that  followed,  some  of  them  lapsed  into  in- 
difference, went  the  way  of  the  world,  and  named 
the  name  of  Christ  no  more.  The  ordeal  of  life 
proved  more  potent  and  more  terrible  than  the 
ordeal  of  a  fiery  death. 

Bunyan  had  learned  that  lesson.  When  he  was 
in  the  depths  of  his  despair,  envying  the  beasts 
and  birds  about  him,  and  tormenting  himself  with 
visions  of  hell-fire,  he  went  one  day  to  hear  a  ser- 
mon on  the  love  of  Christ.  To  use  his  own  words, 
his  'comforting  time  was  come.'  'I  began,'  he  says, 
*to  give  place  to  the  word  which  with  power  did 
over  and  over  again  make  this  joyful  sound  within 
my  soul :  "Who  shall  separate  me  from  the  love  of 
Christ?"  And  with  that  my  heart  was  filled  full  of 
comfort  and  hope,  and  I  could  believe  that  my  sins 


222  A  Handful  of  Stars 

would  be  forgiven  me.  Yea,  I  was  so  taken  with 
the  love  and  mercy  of  God  that  I  remember  that  I 
could  not  tell  how  to  contain  till  I  got  home;  I 
thought  I  could  have  spoken  of  His  love  to  the  very 
crows  that  sat  upon  the  ploughed  lands  before  me. 
Surely  I  will  not  forget  this  forty  years  hence  ?' 

Forty  years  hence!  Forty  years  hence  Bunyan 
was  sleeping  in  his  quiet  grave  in  Bunhill  Fields; 
and  nobody  who  visits  that  familiar  resting-place 
of  his  supposes  for  a  moment  that  death  has  sepa- 
rated him  from  the  love  of  Christ. 

But  life!  Life  is  a  far  more  dangerous  foe. 
*The  tempter,'  Bunyan  tells  us,  'would  come  upon 
me  with  such  discouragements  as  these :  "You  are 
very  hot  for  mercy,  but  I  will  cool  you.  This  frame 
shall  not  last.  Many  have  been  as  hot  as  you  for  a 
spirit,  but  I  have  quenched  their  zeal,"  With  this, 
several,  who  were  fallen  off,  would  be  set  before 
mine  eyes.  Then  I  would  be  afraid  that  I  should 
fall  away,  too,  but,  thought  I,  I  will  watch  and  take 
care.  "Though  you  do,"  said  the  tempter,  "I  shall 
be  too  hard  for  you.  I  will  cool  you  insensibly,  by 
degrees,  by  Httle  and  little.  Continual  rocking  will 
lull  a  crying  child  to  sleep.  I  shall  have  you  cold 
before  long!"  These  things,'  Bunyan  continues, 
'brought  me  into  great  straits.  I  feared  that  time 
would  wear  from  my  mind  my  sense  of  the  evil  of 
sin,  of  the  worth  of  heaven,  and  of  my  need  of  the 
blood  of  Christ.'  But  at  that  critical  moment  a  text 
came  to  his  help — Uncle  Tom's  text,  Signor  Ga- 


Uncle  Tom's  Text  223 

vazzi's  text.  What  shall  separate  us  from  the  love 
of  Christf  For  I  am  persuaded  that  neither  death, 
nor  life,  nor  angels,  nor  principalities,  nor  powers, 
nor  things  present,  nor  things  to  come,  nor  height, 
nor  depth,  nor  any  other  creature  shall  he  able  to 
separate  us  from  the  love  of  God  which  is  in  Christ 
Jesus  our  Lord'  'That,'  Bunyan  says,  'was  a  good 
word  to  me.' 

Death  cannot  do  it! — that  is  good! 

Life  cannot  do  it! — that  is  better! 

'And  now  I  hoped,'  says  Bunyan,  in  concluding 
his  narrative  of  this  experience,  'now  I  hoped  that 
long  life  would  not  destroy  me  nor  make  me  miss 
of  heaven.' 

V 

Paul  dares  the  universe.  He  defies  infinity.  He 
summons,  in  pairs,  all  the  powers  that  be,  and 
glories  in  their  impotence  to  dissolve  the  sacred  tie 
that  binds  him  to  his  Lord. 

He  calls  Life  and  Death  before  him  and  dares 
them  to  do  it! 

He  calls  the  Powers  of  this  World  and  the 
Powers  of  Every  Other;  none  of  them,  he  says, 
can  do  it! 

He  calls  the  Things  of  the  Historic  Present  and 
the  Developments  of  the  Boundless  Future.  What- 
ever changes  may  come  with  the  pageant  of  the 
ages,  there  is  one  dear  relationship  that  nothing  can 
ever  affect! 


224  A  Handful  of  Staxs 

He  calls  the  Things  in  the  Heights  and  the  Things 
in  the  Depths;  but  neither  among  angels  nor  devils 
can  he  discover  any  force  that  makes  his  faith  to 
falter ! 

He  surveys  this  Creation  and  he  contemplates 
the  Possibility  of  Others;  but  it  is  with  a  smile  of 
confidence  and  triumph. 

'For  I  am  persuaded/  he  says,  'that  neither  death, 
nor  life,  nor  angels,  nor  principalities,  nor  powers, 
nor  things  present,  nor  things  to  come,  nor  height, 
nor  depth,  nor  any  other  creature  shall  be  able  to 
separate  us  from  the  love  of  God  which  is  in  Christ 
Jesus  our  Lord/ 

VI 

The  covenanters  knew  the  value  of  Uncle  Tom's 
text.  Among  the  heroic  records  of  Scotland's  ter- 
rible ordeal,  nothing  is  more  impressive  or  affecting 
than  the  desperate  way  in  which  persecuted  men  and 
women  clung  with  both  hands  to  the  golden  hope 
enshrined  in  that  majestic  word.  It  was  in  a  Scot- 
tish kirk  that  Macaulay  discovered  its  splendor; 
but  even  Macaulay  failed  to  see  in  it  all  that  they 
saw. 

It  was  a  beautiful  May  morning  when  Major 
Windram  rode  into  Wigton  and  demanded  the  sur- 
render, to  him  and  his  soldiers,  of  two  women  who 
had  been  convicted  of  attending  a  conventicle.  One 
of  them  was  Margaret  Wilson,  a  fair  young  girl 
of  eighteen.    She  was  condemned  to  be  lashed  to 


Uncle  Tom's  Text  225 

a  stake  at  low  tide  in  such  a  way  that  the  rising 
waters  would  slowly  overwhelm  her.  In  hope  of 
shaking  her  fidelity,  and  saving  her  life,  it  was 
ordained  that  her  companion  should  be  fastened  to- 
a  stake  a  little  farther  out.  'It  may  be,'  said  her 
persecutors,  'that,  as  Mistress  Margaret  watches 
the  waves  go  over  the  widow  before  her,  she  will 
relent !'  The  ruse,  however,  had  the  opposite  effect. 
When  Margaret  saw  the  fortitude  with  which  the 
elder  woman  yielded  her  soul  to  the  incoming  tide, 
she  began  to  sing  a  paraphrase  of  the  twenty-fifth 
Psalm,  and  those  on  the  beach  took  up  the  strain. 
The  soldiers  angrily  silenced  them,  and  Margaret's^ 
mother,  rushing  into  the  waters,  begged  her  to  save 
her  life  by  making  the  declaration  that  the  authori- 
ties desired.  But  tantalized  and  tormented,  she 
never  flinched ;  and,  as  the  waves  lapped  her  face  she 
was  heard  to  repeat,  again  and  again,  the  trium- 
phant words :  'I  am  persuaded  that  neither  death, 
nor  life,  nor  angels,  nor  principalities,  nor  pozvers, 
nor  things  present,  nor  things  to  come,  nor  height, 
nor  depth,  nor  any  other  creature,  shall  be  able  to 
separate  lis  from  the  love  of  God  which  is  in  Christ 
Jesus  our  Lord.' 

As  a  representative  of  the  men  of  that  stern  time, 
we  may  cite  John  Bruce.  When  that  sturdy  veteran, 
after  a  long  life  of  faithful  testimony  and  incessant 
suffering,  lay  dying,  he  beckoned  his  daughter  to 
the  chair  beside  his  bed.  He  told  her,  in  broken 
sentences  and   failing  voice,  of  the  goodness  and 


226  A  Handful  of  Stars 

mercy  that  had  followed  him  all  the  days  of  his  life; 
and  then,  pausing  suddenly,  he  exclaimed:  'Hark, 
lass,  the  Master  calls!  Fetch  the  Bulk!'  She 
brought  the  Bible  to  his  side.  'Turn,'  he  said,  'to 
the  eighth  of  Romans  and  put  my  finger  on  these 
words:  "Who  can  separate  us  from  the  love  of 
Christ  f  For  I  am  persuaded  that  neither  death,  nor 
life,  nor  angels,  nor  principalities,  nor  powers,  nor 
things  present,  nor  things  to  come,  nor  height,  nor 
depth,  nor  any  other  creature,  shall  be  able  to  sepa- 
rate us  from  the  love  of  God  which  is  in  Christ  Jesus 
our  Lord."  Now,'  he  continued,  as  soon  as  she  had 
found  the  place,  'put  my  finger  on  the  words  and 
hold  it  there !'  And  with  his  finger  there,  pointing 
even  in  death  to  the  ground  of  all  his  confidence, 
the  old  man  passed  away. 

VII 

Who  shall  separate  us  from  the  love  of  Christ  f 
asked  Uncle  Tom,  with  his  last  breath. 

'Massa  George  sat  fixed  with  solemn  awe,'  says 
Mrs.  Beecher  Stowe,  in  continuing  the  story.  'It 
seemed  to  him  that  the  place  was  holy;  and  as  he 
closed  Tom's  lifeless  eyes,  and  rose  to  leave  the 
dead,  only  one  thought  possessed  him — ^What  a 
thing  it  is  to  be  a  Christian!' 

It  is  indeed  I 


XX 

ANDREW  BONAR'S  TEXT 


It  is  an  old-fashioned  Scottish  kirk — and  the  Com- 
munion Sabbath.  Everybody  knows  of  the  hush 
that  brooded  over  a  Scottish  community  a  century 
ago  whenever  the  Communion  season  came  round. 
The  entire  population  gave  itself  up  to  a  period  of 
holy  awe  and  solemn  gladness.  As  the  day  drew 
near,  nothing  else  was  thought  about  or  spoken  of. 
At  the  kirk  itself,  day  after  day  was  given  up  to 
preparatory  exercises,  fast-time  sermons  and  the 
fencing  of  tables.  In  this  old  kirk,  in  which  we  this 
morning  find  ourselves,  all  these  preliminaries  are 
past.  The  young  people  who  are  presenting  them- 
selves for  the  first  time  have  been  duly  examined  by 
the  grave  and  somber  elders,  and,  having  survived 
that  fiery  and  searching  ordeal,  have  received  their 
tokens.  And  now  everything  is  ready.  The  great 
day  has  actually  come.  The  snowy  cloths  drape 
the  pews;  everything  is  in  readiness  for  the  solemn 
festival;  the  people  come  from  far  and  near.  But 
I  am  not  concerned  with  those  who,  on  this  impres- 
sive and  memorable  occasion,  throng  around  the 
table  and  partake  of  the  sacred  mysteries.  For,  at 
the  back  of  the  kirk,  high  up,  is  a  cavernous  and 

327 


228  A  Handful  of  Stars 

apparently  empty  old  gallery,  dark  and  dismal.  Is 
it  empty?  What  is  that  patch  of  paleness  that  I  see 
up  in  the  comer?  Is  it  a  face?  It  is!  It  is  the 
grave  and  eager  face  of  a  small  boy;  a  face  over- 
spread with  awe  and  wonder  as  he  gazes  upon  the 
affecting  and  impressive  scene  that  is  being  enacted 
below.  *As  a  child,'  said  Dr.  Bonar,  many  years 
afterwards,  when  addressing  the  little  people  of  his 
own  congregation,  *as  a  child  I  used  to  love  to  creep 
up  into  that  old  gallery  on  Communion  Sabbaths. 
How  I  trembled  as  I  climbed  up  the  stairs!  And 
how  I  shuddered  when  the  minister  entered  and 
began  the  service !  When  I  saw  young  people  of  my 
own  acquaintance  take  the  holy  emblems  for  the  first 
time,  I  wondered  if,  one  great  and  beautiful  day,  I 
should  myself  be  found  among  the  communicants. 
But  the  thought  always  died  in  the  moment  of  its 
birth.  For  I  found  in  my  heart  so  much  that  must 
keep  me  from  the  love  of  Christ.  I  thought,  as  I 
sat  in  the  deep  recesses  of  that  gloomy  old  gallery, 
that  I  must  purge  my  soul  of  all  defilement,  and  cul- 
tivate all  the  graces  of  the  faith,  before  I  could  hope 
for  a  place  in  the  Kingdom  of  Christ  or  venture  as 
a  humble  guest  to  His  table.  But  oh,  how  I  longed 
one  day  to  be  numbered  among  that  happy  company ! 
I  thought  no  privilege  on  earth  could  compare  with 
that' 

II 

A  couple  of  entries  in  his  diary  will  complete  our 


Andrew  Sonar's  Text  229 

preparation  for  the  record  of  the  day  that  changed 
his  life.  He  is  a  youth  of  nineteen,  staid  and 
thoughtful,  but  full  of  life  and  merriment,  and  the 
popular  center  of  a  group  of  student  friends. 

May  3,  1829, — Great  sorrow,  because  I  am  still 
out  of  Christ. 

May  31,  1829. — My  birthday  is  past  and  I  am 
not  born  again. 

Not  every  day,  I  fancy,  do  such  entries  find  their 
way  into  the  confidential  journals  of  young  people 
of  nineteen. 

Ill 

God's  flowers  are  all  everlastings.  The  night  may 
enfold  them ;  the  grass  may  conceal  them ;  the  snows 
may  entomb  them ;  but  they  are  always  there.  They 
do  not  perish  or  fade.  See  how  the  principle  works 
out  in  history !  There  is  no  more  remarkable  revival 
of  religion  in  our  national  story  than  that  repre- 
sented by  the  Rise  of  the  Puritans.  The  face  of 
England  was  changed;  everything  was  made  anew. 
Then  came  the  Restoration.  Paradise  was  lost. 
Puritanism  vanished  as  suddenly  as  it  had  arisen. 
But  was  it  dead?  Professor  James  Stalker,  in  a 
Centennial  Lecture  on  Robert  Murray  McCheyne — 
a  name  that  stands  imperishably  associated  with  that 
of  Andrew  Bonar — says  most  emphatically  that  it 
was  not.  He  shows  how,  like  a  forest  fire,  the 
movement  swept  across  Europe,  returning  at  last  to 
the  land  in  which  it  rose.    When,  with  the  Restora- 


230  A  Handful  of  Stars 

tion,  England  relapsed  into  folly,  it  passed  over  into 
Holland,  preparing  for  us,  among  other  things,  a 
new  and  better  line  of  English  kings.  From  Holland 
it  passed  into  Germany,  and,  by  means  of  the  Mora- 
vian Brethren,  produced  the  most  amazing  mission- 
ary movement  of  all  time.  From  Germany  it  re- 
turned to  England,  giving  us  the  Methodist  Revival 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  a  revival  which,  according 
to  Lecky,  alone  saved  England  from  the  horrors  of 
an  industrial  revolution.  And  from  England  it 
swept  into  Scotland,  and  kindled  there  such  a  revival 
of  religion  as  has  left  an  indelible  impression  upon 
Scottish  life  and  character.  It  was  in  the  sweep  of 
that  historic  movement  that  the  soul  of  Andrew 
Bonar  was  bom. 

IV 

'It  was  in  1830,'  he  says,  in  a  letter  to  his  brother, 
written  in  his  eighty-third  year,  'it  was  in  1830  that 
I  found  the  Saviour,  or  rather,  that  He  found  me, 
and  laid  me  on  His  shoulders  rejoicing.'  And  how 
did  it  all  come  about?  It  was  a  tranquil  evening  in 
the  early  autumn,  and  a  Sabbath.  There  is  always 
something  conducive  to  contemplation  about  an 
autumn  evening.  When,  one  of  these  days,  one  of 
our  philosophers  gives  us  a  Psychology  of  the  Sea- 
sons, I  shall  confidently  expect  to  find  that  the  great 
majority  of  conversions  take  place  in  the  autumn. 
At  any  rate,  Andrew  Bonar's  did.  As  he  looked  out 
upon  the  world  in  the  early  morning,  he  saw  the 


Andrew  Bonar's  Text  231 

shrubs  in  the  garden  below  him,  and  the  furze  on 
the  moorland  beyond,  twinkling  with  the  dew- 
drenched  webs  of  innumerable  spiders.  In  his  walk 
to  the  church,  and  in  a  stroll  across  the  fields  in  the 
afternoon,  the  hush  of  the  earth,  broken  only  by  the 
lowing  of  cattle,  the  bleating  of  sheep  and  the  rustle 
of  the  leaves  that  had  already  fallen,  saturated  his 
spirit.  The  world,  he  thought,  had  never  looked  so 
beautiful.  The  forest  was  a  riot  of  russet  and  gold. 
The  hedge-rows  were  bronze  and  purple  and  saffron. 
The  soft  and  misty  sunlight  only  accentuated  the 
amber  tints  that  marked  the  dying  fern.  In  the 
evening,  unable  to  shake  off  the  pensive  mood  into 
which  the  day  had  thrown  him,  he  reached  down 
Guthrie's  Trial  of  a  Saving  Interest  in  Christ,  and 
gave  himself  to  serious  thought.  Was  it  in  the  pages 
of  Guthrie's  searching  volume  that  he  came  upon  the 
text,  or  did  he,  later  on,  lay  down  the  book  and  take 
up  his  New  Testament  instead?  I  do  not  know. 
But,  however  that  may  have  been,  one  great  and 
glowing  thought  took  complete  possession  of  his 
soul.  As  the  tide  will  sometimes  rush  suddenly  up 
the  sands,  filling  up  every  hollow  and  bearing  away 
all  the  seaweed  and  driftwood  that  has  been  lying 
there  so  long,  so  one  surging  and  overmastering 
word  poured  itself  suddenly  in  upon  his  mind,  bear- 
ing away  with  it  the  doubts  and  apprehensions  that 
had  tormented  him  for  years.  'Of  His  fullness  have 
we  all  received,  and  grace  for  grace.'  Then  and 
there,  he  says,  he  began  to  have  a  secret  joyful  hope 


232  A  Handful  of  Stars 

that  he  did  really  believe  on  the  Lord  Jesus.  The 
fullness  and  freeness  of  the  divine  grace  filled  my 
lieart ;  I  did  nothing  but  receive !' 

*0f  His  fullness  have  all  we  received!' 

'His  fullness  filled  my  heart!' 

*I  did  nothing  hut  receive!' 

Forty-two  years  afterwards,  at  the  age  of  sixty- 
two,  he  revisited  that  room  and  tried  to  recapture  the 
holy  ecstasy  with  which,  so  many  years  earlier,  he 
had  'first  realized  a  found  Saviour.' 

'Grace  for  grace!' 

V 

'Of  His  fullness  have  all  we  received,  and  grace 
for  grace!' 

I  know  a  fair  Australian  city  that  nestles  serenely 
at  the  foot  of  a  tall  and  massive  mountain.  Half 
way  up  the  slopes  is  the  city's  reservoir.  In  a 
glorious  and  evergreen  valley  it  has  been  hollowed 
out  of  the  rugged  mountain-side.  The  virgin  bush 
surrounds  it  on  every  hand ;  at  its  western  extremity 
a  graceful  waterfall  comes  pouring  down  from  the 
heights,  mingling  its  silvery  music  with  the  songs 
of  the  birds  around.  It  is  the  favorite  haunt  of 
gaily-colored  kingfishers.  Swallows  skim  hither 
and  thither  over  its  crystalline  and  placid  surface; 
and,  as  if  kissing  their  own  reflections  in  the  glass, 
they  just  touch  the  water  as  they  flit  across,  creating 
circles  that  grow  and  grow  until  they  reach  the 
utmost  edge.     Like  a  giant  who,  conscious  of  his 


Andrew  Sonar's  Text  233 

grandeur,  loves  to  see  his  image  in  the  mirror,  the 
scarped  and  weather-beaten  summit  gazes  sternly 
down  from  above  and  sees  his  splendors  reproduced, 
and  even  enhanced,  in  the  limpid  depths  below. 
Often,  on  a  hot  day,  have  I  resorted  to  this  sylvan 
retreat.  At  this  altitude,  how  deliciously  cool  is  the 
air;  how  icy  cold  the  water!  It  has  come  pouring 
down  the  cataract  from  the  melting  snows  above! 
For,  strangely  enough,  the  winter  rains  and  the  sum- 
mer suns  conspire  to  keep  it  always  full.  Far  down 
the  mountain-side  I  see  the  city,  shimmering  in  the 
noonday  heat.  I  think  of  its  population,  hot,  tired 
and  thirsty.  And  then  it  pleases  me  to  reflect  that 
every  house  down  there  at  the  mountain's  foot  is  in 
direct  communication  with  this  vast  basin  of  shining 
water.  The  people  have  but  to  stretch  forth  their 
hands  and  replenish  their  vessels  again  and  again. 
This  crystal  reservoir  far  up  the  slopes  is  really  a 
part  of  the  furniture  of  each  of  those  homes.  Have 
not  I  myself  been  down  there  in  the  dust  and  heat 
on  such  a  day  as  this?  Have  not  I  myself  been 
parched  and  thirsty?  And  have  I  not  thought  wist- 
fully of  the  reservoir  far  up  the  slopes  ?  And  have 
I  not  taken  my  glass  and  filled  it  and  quaffed  with 
relish  the  sweet  and  sparkling  water?  And  have  I 
not  said  to  myself,  as  I  thought  of  the  familiar 
scene  among  the  hills :  'Of  its  fullness  have  all  we 
received,  and  water  for  water.' 

'His  fullness  filled  my  heart!' 

7  did  nothing  hut  receive!' 


234  A  Handful  of  Stars 

'Of  His  fullness  have  all  we  received,  and  grace 
for  grace!' 

yi 

Yes,  grace  for  grace !  Grace  for  manhood  follow- 
ing upon  grace  for  youth!  Grace  for  sickness  fol- 
lowing upon  grace  for  health!  Grace  for  sorrow 
following  upon  grace  for  joy!  Grace  for  age  fol- 
lowing upon  grace  for  maturity!  Grace  to  die  fol- 
lowing upon  grace  to  live !  Of  that  fullness  of  which 
he  first  drank  on  that  lovely  autumn  evening,  he 
drank  again  and  again  and  again,  always  with  fresh 
delight  and  satisfaction. 

Twenty-five  years  later,  I  find  him  saying  that, 
*if  there  is  one  thing  for  which  I  praise  the  Lord 
more  than  another  it  is  this :  that  He  opened  my  eyes 
to  see  that  Christ  pleases  the  Father  to  the  full,  and 
that  this  is  the  ground  of  my  acceptance.' 

Five  years  later  still,  he  says  that  *I  have  been 
many,  many  times  unhappy  for  awhile,  but  have 
never  seriously  doubted  my  interest  in  the  Lord 
Jesus.* 

When  he  was  fifty-four,  his  wife  died,  leaving 
him  to  bring  up  his  young  family  as  best  he  could. 
But  'grace  for  grace.'  A  year  or  two  later,  I  find 
him  rejoicing  that  'to-night  both  Isabella  and  Mar- 
jory came  home  speaking  of  their  having  been  en- 
abled to  rest  on  Christ.  What  a  joyful  time  it  has 
been!  I  think,  too,  the  young  servant  has  found 
Christ.    Blessed  Lord,  I  have  asked  Thee  often  to 


Andrew  Bonar's  Text  235 

remember  Thy  promise,  and  "when  mother  leaves 
thee,  the  Lord  will  take  thee  up."  I  have  asked 
Thee  to  be  a  mother  to  my  motherless  children,  and 
now,  indeed,  Thou  hast  given  me  my  prayer.  Praise, 
praise  for  evermore !' 

On  the  fiftieth  anniversarj-  of  that  never-to-be- 
forgotten  autumn  evening,  he  records  with  gratitude 
the  fact  that,  'for  fifty  years  the  Lord  has  kept  me 
within  sight  of  the  Cross.' 

Ten  years  later  still,  now  an  old  man  of  eighty, 
he  declares  that  his  Saviour  has  never  once  left  him 
in  the  darkness  all  these  years. 

And,  two  years  later,  just  before  his  death,  he 
writes,  *it  was  sixty-two  years  ago  that  I  found  the 
Saviour,  or,  rather,  that  He  found  me;  and  I  have 
never  parted  company  with  Him  all  these  years. 
Christ  the  Saviour  has  been  to  me  my  true  portion, 
my  heaven  begun ;  and  my  earnest  prayer  and  desire 
for  you  and  Mary  and  little  Marjory  will  always  be, 
that  you  may  each  find,  not  only  all  I  ever  found  in 
Christ,  but  a  hundredfold  more,  every  year!' 

Grace  for  grace! 

Grace  for  the  father  and  grace  for  the  children! 

Grace  for  the  old  man  just  about  to  die,  and  grace 
for  the  little  child  just  learning  how  to  live! 

'Of  His  fidlness  have  all  we  received,  and  grace 
for  grace!' 

vir 

Yes,  grace  for  grace!    Grace  for  the  pulpit  and 


236  A  Handful  of  Stars 

grace  for  the  pew!  For,  through  all  these  years, 
Andrew  Bonar  was  a  minister,  and  the  text  was  the 
keynote  of  all  his  utterances. 

Fullness!  Fullness!  Fullness! 

Receive!  Receive!  Receive! 

Grace  for  grace !     Grace  for  grace ! 

'Of  His  fullness  have  all  we  received,  and  grace 
for  grace!' 

In  his  study  there  hung  a  text  of  two  words.  He 
had  had  it  specially  printed,  for  those  two  words  ex- 
pressed the  abiding  fullness  on  which  he  loved  to 
dwell.  'Thou  remainest!'  One  day,  we  are  told,  a 
lady  in  great  sorrow  called  to  see  him.  But  nothing 
that  he  said  could  comfort  her.  Then,  suddenly,  he 
saw  a  light  come  into  her  face.  'Say  no  more,'  she 
said,  *I  have  found  what  I  need !'  and  she  pointed  to 
the  text:  'Thou  remainest!' 

That  was  it!  Come  what  will,  He  abides!  Go 
who  may,  He  remains !  Amidst  all  the  chances  and 
changes  of  life,  He  perennially  satisfies.  Like  the 
thirsty  toilers  in  the  city,  I  draw  and  draw  again,  and 
am  each  time  refreshed  and  revived. 

'His  fullness  fills  my  heart!' 

'I  do  nothing  hut  receive!' 

'Of  His  fullness  have  all  we  received,  and  grace 
for  grace!' 


XXI 
FRANCIS  D'ASSISrS  TEXT 


Oscar  Wilde  declares  that,  since  Christ  went  to 
the  cross,  the  world  has  produced  only  one  genuine 
Christian,  and  his  name  is  Francis  d'Assisi.  Cer- 
tainly he  is  the  one  saint  whom  all  the  churches  have 
agreed  to  canonize ;  the  most  vividly  Christlike  man 
who  has  ever  submitted  his  character  to  the  scrutiny 
of  public  criticism.  His  life,  as  Green  says  in  his 
Short  History  of  the  English  People,  his  life  falls 
like  a  stream  of  light  athwart  the  darkness  of  the 
mediaeval  ages.  Matthew  Arnold  speaks  of  him  as 
a  figure  of  most  magical  potency  and  sweetness  and 
charm.  Francis  called  men  back  to  Christ  and 
brought  Christ  back  to  men.  'All  Europe  woke  with 
a  start,'  Sabatier  affirms,  'and  whatever  was  best 
in  humanity  leaped  to  follow  his  footsteps.' 

II 

A  blithe  saint  was  Francis.  He  loved  to  laugh ; 
he  loved  to  sing;  and  he  loved  to  hear  the  music  of 
laughter  and  of  song  as  it  rippled  from  the  lips  of 
others.  Every  description  that  has  come  down  to  us 
lays  stress  on  the  sunshine  that  played  about  his  lofty 

237 


238  A  Handful  of  Stars 

forehead  and  open  countenance.  The  days  came 
when,  though  still  in  the  heyday  of  early  manhood, 
his  handsome  figure  was  gaunt  and  wasted ;  his  fine 
face  furrowed  with  suffering  and  care;  his  virile 
strength  exhausted  by  ceaseless  toil,  wearisome  jour- 
neyings,  and  exacting  ministries  of  many  kinds. 
But,  emaciated  and  worn,  his  face  never  for  a 
moment  lost  its  radiance.  He  greeted  life  with  a 
cheer  and  took  leave  of  it  with  a  smile. 

His  youth  was  a  frolic;  his  very  sins  were  pleas- 
ant sins.  His  winsomeness  drew  to  him  the  noblest 
youths  and  fairest  maidens  of  Assisi.  The  lithe  and 
graceful  figure  of  Francis,  with  his  dark,  eloquent 
but  sparkling  eyes,  his  wealthy  shock  of  jet  black 
hair,  his  soft,  rich,  sonorous  voice  and  his  gay  but 
faultless  attire,  was  the  soul  and  center  of  every 
youthful  revel.  He  was,  as  Sir  James  Stephen  says, 
foremost  in  every  feat  of  arms,  first  in  every  triumph 
of  scholarship,  and  the  gayest  figure  in  every  fes- 
tival. 'The  brightest  eyes  in  Assisi,  dazzled  by  so 
many  graces,  and  the  most  reverend  brows  there, 
acknowledging  such  early  wisdom,  were  alike  bent 
with  admiration  towards  him;  and  all  conspired  to 
sustain  his  father's  confidence  that,  in  his  person, 
the  family  name  would  rival  the  proudest  and  most 
splendid  in  Italy's  illustrious  past.'  His  bewitching 
personality,  his  rollicking  gaiety,  his  brooding 
thoughtfulness,  his  dauntless  courage  and  his  courtly 
ways  swept  all  men  off  their  feet;  he  had  but  to 
lead  and  they  instinctively  followed;  he  commanded 


Francis  d'Assisi's  Text  239 

and  they  unquestionably  obeyed.  He  was  nick- 
named the  Flower  of  Assist.  He  loved  to  be  happy 
and  to  make  others  happy.  'Yet,'  as  one  Roman 
Catholic  biographer  remarks,  'he  did  not  yet  know 
where  true  happiness  was  to  be  found.'  He  was 
twenty-four  when  he  made  that  sensational  dis- 
covery. He  found  the  source  of  true  happiness  in 
the  last  place  in  the  world  in  which  he  would  have 
thought  of  looking  for  it.  He  found  it  at  the  Cross ! 
And,  in  perfect  consistency  with  his  youthful  con- 
duct, he  spent  the  rest  of  his  days — he  died  at  forty- 
four — in  pointing  men  to  the  Crucified.  As  a  youth 
he  had  done  his  best  to  radiate  laughter  and  song 
among  all  the  young  people  of  Assisi ;  it  was  there- 
fore characteristic  of  him  that,  having  discovered 
the  fountain-head  of  all  abiding  satisfaction,  he 
should  make  it  the  supreme  object  of  his  maturer 
years  to  share  his  subhme  secret  with  the  whole 
wide  world. 

Ill 

London  was  a  village  in  the  time  of  Francis 
d' Assisi,  and  the  baying  of  the  wolves  was  the  only 
sound  heard  in  the  forests  that  then  covered  the  sites 
of  our  great  modern  cities.  Whilst  King  John  was 
signing  Magna  Carta,  Francis  was  at  Rome  seeking 
recognition  for  his  brotherhood  of  friars.  It  was 
the  age  of  the  Crusaders  and  the  Troubadours. 
Yet,  as  I  read  the  moving  record  of  his  great 
spiritual  experience,  I  forget  that  I  have  invaded  a 


240  A  Handful  of  Stars 

period  in  which  English  history  had  scarcely  begun. 
Francis  has  his  affinities  in  every  land  and  in  every 
age.  Francis  died  four  hundred  years  before  John 
Bunyan  was  born;  yet,  as  I  read  Bunyan's  descrip- 
tion of  Christian  at  the  Cross,  I  seem  to  be  perusing 
afresh  the  story  of  the  conversion  of  Francis.  The 
language  fits  exactly.  Strike  out  the  word  'Chris- 
tian,' and  substitute  the  word  'Francis,'  and  the 
passage  could  be  transferred  bodily  from  the  Pil- 
grim's Progress  to  the  Life  of  Francis  d'Assisi. 

The  conversion  of  Francis  occurred  five  hundred 
years  before  Dr.  Watts  wrote  his  noble  hymn,  'When 
I  survey  the  wondrous  Cross' ;  yet,  without  knowing 
the  words,  Francis  sang  that  song  in  his  heart  over 
and  over  and  over  again. 

The  conversion  of  Francis  was  effected  six  hun- 
dred years  before  the  conversion  of  Mr.  Spurgeon. 
Yet  that  conversion  in  the  ruined  church  of  St. 
Damian's  in  Italy  is  the  very  counterpart  of  that 
later  conversion  in  the  little  chapel  at  Artillery 
Street,  Colchester. 

'Look !'  cried  the  preacher  at  Colchester,  'look  to 
Jesus !  Look  to  Jesus !'  *I  looked,'  says  Mr.  Spur- 
geon ;  'I  looked  and  was  saved !' 

'Francis  looked  to  the  Crucified,'  says  his  biog- 
rapher. 'It  was  a  look  of  faith;  a  look  of  love;  a 
look  that  had  all  his  soul  in  it ;  a  look  which  did  not 
attempt  to  analyze,  but  which  was  content  to  receive. 
He  looked,  and,  looking,  entered  into  life.' 

You  can  take  the  sentences  from  the  Life  of 


Francis  d'Assisi's  Text  241 

Francis  and  transfer  them  to  the  Life  of  Spurgeotty. 
or  vice  versa,  and  they  v^rill  fit  their  new  environ- 
ment with  the  most  perfect  historical  accuracy. 

IV 

As,  with  your  face  towards  Spello,  you  follow  the 
windings  of  the  Via  Francesca,  you  will  find  the 
little  church  of  St.  Damian's  on  the  slope  of  the 
hill  outside  the  city  walls.  It  is  reached  by  a  few 
minutes'  walk  over  a  stony  path,  shaded  with  olive- 
trees,  amid  odors  of  lavender  and  rosemary.  'Stand- 
ing on  the  top  of  a  hillock,  the  entire  plain  is  visible 
through  a  curtain  of  cypresses  and  pines  which  seem 
to  be  trying  to  hide  the  humble  hermitage  and  set  up 
an  ideal  barrier  between  it  and  the  world.'  Francis 
was  particularly  fond  of  this  wooded  walk  and  of 
the  sanctuary  to  which  it  led.  In  pensive  moments, 
when  it  was  more  than  usually  evident  to  him  that, 
with  all  his  merriment,  he  had  not  yet  discovered  the 
fountain  of  true  gladness,  he  turned  his  face  this 
way. 

The  crucifix  at  St.  Damian's — which  is  still  pre- 
served in  the  sacristy  of  Santa  Chiara — has  features 
peculiarly  its  own.  It  differs  from  other  images  of 
the  kind :  'In  most  of  the  sanctuaries  of  the  twelfth 
century,  the  Crucified  One,  frightfully  lacerated, 
with  bleeding  wounds,  appears  to  seek  to  inspire  only 
grief  and  compunction;  that  of  St.  Damian,  on  the 
contrary,  has  an  expression  of  unutterable  calm  and 
gentleness;  instead  of  closing  the  eyelids  in  eternal 


242  A  Handful  of  Stars 

surrender  to  the  weight  of  suffering,  it  looks  down 
in  self-forgetfulness,  and  its  pure,  clear  gaze  says, 
not  "See  how  I  suffer!"  but  "Come  unto  Me!"  ' 

That,  at  any  rate,  is  what  it  said  to  Francis  on  that 
memorable  day.  With  an  empty  and  a  hungry  heart 
he  kneeled  before  it.  *0  Lord  Jesus,'  he  cried,  'shed 
Thy  light  upon  the  darkness  of  my  mind!'  And 
then  an  extraordinary  thing  happened.  The  Saviour 
to  whom  he  prayed  was  no  longer  an  inanimate 
image;  but  a  living  Person!  *An  answer  seemed 
to  come  from  the  tender  eyes  that  looked  down  on 
him  from  the  Cross,'  says  Canon  Adderley.  'J^sus 
heard  his  cry,  and  Francis  accepted  the  dear  Lord 
as  his  Saviour  and  Master.  A  real  spiritual  union 
took  place  between  him  and  his  Divine  Lord.  He 
took  Him  for  better  for  worse,  for  richer  for  poorer, 
till  death  and  after  death,  for  ever.'  'This  vision 
marks,'  Sabatier  says,  'the  jfinal  triumph  of  Francis. 
His  union  with  Christ  is  consummated;  from  this 
time  he  can  exclaim  with  the  mystics  of  every  age, 
"My  beloved  is  mine  and  I  am  His."  From  that  day 
the  remembrance  of  the  Crucified  One,  the  thought 
of  the  love  which  had  triumphed  in  immolating 
itself,  became  the  very  center  of  his  religious  life, 
the  soul  of  his  soul.  For  the  first  time,  Francis  had 
been  brought  into  direct,  personal,  intimate  contact 
with  Jesus  Christ.'  'It  was,'  Canon  Adderley  says 
again,  'no  mere  intellectual  acceptance  of  a  theo- 
logical proposition,  but  an  actual  self-committal  to 
the  Person  of  Jesus ;  no  mere  sentimental  feeling  of 


Francis  d'Assisi's  Text  243 

pity  for  the  sufferings  of  Christ,  or  of  comfort  in  the 
thought  that,  through  those  sufferings,  he  could  se- 
cure a  place  in  a  future  heaven,  but  a  real,  brave 
assumption  of  the  Cross,  an  entering  into  the  fellow- 
ship of  the  Passion  of  Christ,  a  determination  to 
suffer  with  Him  and  to  spend  and  be  spent  in  His 
service.' 

Francis  never  forgot  that  moment.  His  whole 
soul  overflowed  with  the  intensity  of  his  affection 
for  his  Saviour.  To  the  end  of  his  days  he  could 
never  think  of  the  Cross  without  tears;  yet  he  never 
knew  whether  those  tears  were  prompted  by  admira- 
tion, pity,  or  desire. 

When  he  arose  and  left  the  little  sanctuary,  he 
felt,  as  Bunyan's  pilgrim  felt,  that  he  had  lost  his 
load,  and  lost  it  for  ever. 

But  he  felt  that  he  had  assumed  another.  He  had 
taken  up  the  Cross.  He  had  devoted  himself  to  its 
service.  'God  forbid/  he  cried,  'that  I  should  glory 
save  in  the  Cross  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  by  whom 
the  world  is  crucified  unto  me  and  I  unto  the  world/ 
When,  five  centuries  later,  Isaac  Watts  surveyed  the 
wondrous  Cross  on  which  the  Prince  of  Glory  died, 
his  contemplation  led  to  the  same  resolve : 

Forbid  it,  Lord,  that  I  should  boast, 
Save  in  the  death  of  Christ  my  God! 

All  the  vain  things  that  charm  me  most, 
I  sacrifice  them  to  His  blood. 

And  so,  once  more,  without  knowing  the  words, 
Francis  sang  in  his  soul  that  song  of  consecration. 


244  ^  Handful  of  Stars 

'/  looked  and  looked  and  looked  again!'  say 
Francis  and  Spurgeon,  six  centuries  apart. 

'It  was  very  surprising  to  me  that  the  sight  of 
the  Cross  should  thus  ease  me  of  my  burden!'  say 
Francis  and  Bunyan,  with  four  centuries  between. 

'Forbid  it,  Lord,  that  I  should  boast  save  in 
the  death  of  Christ  my  God!'  cry  Francis  and 
Isaac  Watts,  undivided  by  a  chasm  of  five  hundred 
years. 

In  the  presence  of  the  Cross  all  the  lands  are 
united  and  all  the  ages  seem  as  one. 

V 

'God  forbid  that  I  should  glory  save  in  the  Cross 
of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  by  whom  the  world  is 
crucified  unto  me  and  I  unto  the  world.'  In  the 
one  cross  Francis  saw — as  Paul  did — three  cruci- 
fixions. 

He  saw  on  the  Cross  his  Lord  crucified  for  him. 

He  saw  on  the  Cross  the  world  crucified  to  him. 

He  saw  on  the  Cross  himself  crucified  to  the 
world. 

From  that  hour  Francis  knew  nothing  among  men 
save  Jesus  Christ  and  Him  crucified.  Laying  aside 
the  gay  clothing  of  which  he  was  so  fond,  he  donned 
a  peasant's  cloak  and  tied  it  at  the  waist  with  a  piece 
of  cord — the  garb  that  afterwards  became  the  habit 
of  the  Franciscan  Order.  He  then  set  out  to  initiate 
the  greatest  religious  revival  and  the  greatest  mis- 
sionary movement  of  the  mediaeval  ages — the  enter- 


Francis  d'Assisi's  Text  245 

prise  that  paved  the  way  for  the  Renaissance  and  the 
Reformation.  Beginning  at  his  native  town,  he  jour- 
neyed through  the  classic  cities  of  Italy,  unfolding 
to  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men  the  wonders  of  the 
Cross,  Although  the  hideous  sight  and  loathsome 
smell  of  leprosy  had  always  filled  him  with  uncon- 
querable disgust,  he  gladly  ministered  to  the  lepers, 
in  the  hope  that,  by  so  doing,  he  might  impart  to 
them  the  infinite  consolations  of  the  Cross.  Worn 
as  he  soon  became,  he  set  out  to  tramp  from  land  to 
land  in  order  that  he  might  proclaim  through 
Europe  and  Asia  the  matchless  message  of  the  Cross. 
In  his  walks  through  the  lonely  woods  he  loved  to 
proclaim  to  the  very  birds  the  story  of  the  Cross. 
It  is  another  link  with  Bunyan.  Bunyan  felt 
that  he  should  like  to  tell  the  crows  on  the  ploughed 
fields  the  story  of  his  soul's  salvation;  but  Francis 
actually  did  it.  He  would  sit  down  in  the  forest : 
wait  until  the  oaks  and  beeches  and  elms  about  him 
were  filled  with  sparrows  and  finches  and  wrens; 
and  then  tell  of  the  dying  love  of  Him  who  made 
them.  And,  as  they  flew  away,  he  loved  to  fancy 
that  they  formed  themselves  into  a  cross-shaped 
cloud  above  him,  and  that  the  songs  that  they  sang 
were  the  rapt  expression  of  their  adoring  worship. 
In  his  long  journeyings  he  was  often  compelled  to 
subsist  on  roots  and  nuts  and  berries.  Meeting  a 
kindred  spirit  in  the  woods  he  one  day  suggested 
that  they  should  commune  together.  His  companion 
looked  about  him  in  bewilderment.     But  Francis 


246  A  Handful  of  Stars 

pointed  to  a  rock.  'See !'  he  said,  'the  rock  shall  be 
our  altar;  the  berries  shall  be  our  bread;  the  water 
in  the  hollow  of  the  rock  shall  be  our  wine!'  It 
took  very  little  to  turn  the  thoughts  of  Francis  to  the 
Cross;  he  easily  lifted  his  soul  into  communion  with 
the  Crucified.  Whenever  and  wherever  Francis 
opened  his  lips,  the  Cross  was  always  his  theme. 
'He  poured  into  my  heart  the  sweetness  of  Christ !' 
said  his  most  eminent  convert,  and  thousands  could 
have  said  the  same.  Feeling  the  magnitude  of  his 
task  and  the  meagerness  of  his  powers,  he  called 
upon  his  converts  to  assist  him,  and  sent  them  out, 
two  by  two,  to  tell  of  the  ineffable  grace  of  the 
Cross.  In  humanness  and  common  sense  he  founded 
his  famous  Order.  His  followers  were  to  respect 
domestic  ties ;  they  were  to  regard  all  work  as  hon- 
orable, and  to  return  an  equivalent  in  labor  for  all 
that  they  received.  They  were  to  husband  their  own 
powers ;  to  regard  their  bodies  as  sacred,  and  on  no 
account  to  exhaust  their  energies  in  needless  vigils 
and  fastings.  The  grey  friars  soon  became  familiar 
figures  in  every  town  in  Europe.  They  endured 
every  conceivable  privation  and  dared  every  form  of 
danger  in  order  that,  like  their  founder,  they  might 
tell  of  the  deathless  love  of  the  Cross. 

Francis  himself  did  not  live  long  to  lead  them; 
but  in  death  as  in  life  his  eyes  were  on  the  Cross. 
Fifty  of  his  disciples  knelt  around  his  bed  at  the  last. 
He  begged  them  to  read  to  him  the  19th  chapter  of 
John's  gospel — the  record  of  the  Crucifixion.     Tn 


Francis  d'Assisi's  Text  247 

living  or  in  dying,'  he  said,  'God  forbid  that  I  should 
glory  save  in  the  Cross  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ!' 

VI 

Francis  d'Assisi  and  Matthew  Arnold  appear  to 
have  little  or  nothing  in  common.  Francis  was  emo- 
tional, mystical,  seraphic ;  Arnold  was  cultured,  cold, 
and  critical.  Yet  Francis  threw  an  extraordinary 
spell  over  the  scholarly  mind  of  Arnold,  and,  dis- 
similar as  were  their  lives,  in  death  they  were  not 
divided. 

*0  my  Lord  Jesus,*  prayed  Francis,  *I  beseech 
Thee,  grant  me  two  graces  before  I  die;  the  first, 
that  I  may  feel  in  my  soul  and  in  my  body,  as  far  as 
may  be,  the  pain  that  Thou,  sweet  Lord,  didst  bear 
in  the  hours  of  Thy  most  bitter  passion;  the  second, 
that  I  may  feel  in  my  heart,  as  far  as  may  be,  that 
exceeding  love  wherewith  Thou,  O  Son  of  God, 
didst  willingly  endure  such  agony  for  us  sinners.' 

His  prayer  was  answered.  As  the  sun  was  set- 
ting on  a  lovely  autumn  evening,  he  passed  away, 
sharing  the  anguish,  yet  glorying  in  the  triumph  of 
the  Cross.  The  song  of  the  birds  to  whom  he  had 
so  often  preached  flooded  the  air  with  the  melody  he 
loved  so  well. 

On  another  beautiful  evening,  nearly  seven  cen- 
turies later,  Matthew  Arnold  passed  suddenly  away. 
It  was  a  Sunday,  and  he  was  spending  it  with  his 
brother-in-law  at  Liverpool.  In  the  morning  they 
went  to  Sefton  Park  Church.     Dr.  John  Watson 


'348  A  Handful  of  Stars 

(Ian  Maclaren)  preached  on  The  Shadow  of  the 
Cross.  He  used  an  illustration  borrowed  from  the 
records  of  the  Riviera  earthquake.  In  one  village, 
he  said,  everything  was  overthrown  but  the  huge 
way-side  crucifix,  and  to  it  the  people,  feeling  the 
very  ground  shuddering  beneath  their  feet,  rushed 
for  shelter  and  protection.  After  the  sermon,  most 
of  the  members  of  the  congregation  remained  for  the 
Communion;  but  Arnold  went  home.  As  he  came 
down  to  lunch,  a  servant  heard  him  singing  softly : 

When  I  survey  the  wondrous  Cross 
On  which  the  Prince  of  Glory  died. 

My  richest  gain  I  count  but  loss. 
And  pour  contempt  on  all  my  pride. 

Forbid  it,  Lord,  that  I  should  boast, 
Save  in  the  death  of  Christ  my  God! 

All  the  vain  things  that  charm  me  most, 
I  sacrifice  them  to  His  blood. 

In  the  afternoon  he  went  for  a  walk  with  his  rela- 
tives. He  had,  he  told  them,  seldom  been  so  deeply 
impressed  by  a  sermon  as  by  Dr.  Watson's.  He  par- 
ticularly mentioned  the  story  of  the  Riviera  crucifix. 
*Yes,'  he  said,  earnestly,  'the  Cross  remains,  and,  in 
the  straits  of  the  soul,  makes  its  ancient  appeal.'  An 
hour  later  his  heart  had  ceased  to  beat. 

'God  forbid  that  I  should  glory  save  in  the  Cross!* 
cried  Francis. 

'The  Cross  remains,  and,  in  the  straits  of  the  soul, 
makes  its  ancient  appeal!'  exclaims  Matthew  Arnold. 

For  the  Cross,  as  Francis  discovered  that  great 


Francis  d'Assisi's  Text  249 

day,  is  the  true  source  of  all  abiding  happiness;  the 
Cross  is  the  stairway  that  Jacob  saw,  leading  up 
from  earth  to  heaven;  the  Cross  has  a  charm  for 
men  of  every  clime  and  every  time;  it  is  the  boast 
of  the  redeemed;  the  rock  of  ages;  the  hope  of  this 
world  and  the  glory  of  the  world  to  come. 


XXII 
EVERYBODY'S  TEXT 


Centuries  seemed  like  seconds  that  day:  they 
dwindled  down  to  nothing.  It  was  a  beautiful  Sep- 
tember morning:  I  was  only  a  little  boy:  and,  as  a 
great  treat,  my  father  and  mother  had  taken  me  to 
London  to  witness  the  erection  of  Cleopatra's 
.^^  Needle.  The  happenings  of  that  eventful  day  live 
T^  in  my  memory  as  vividly  as  though  they  had  oc- 
curred but  yesterday.  I  seem  even  now  to  be  watch- 
ing the  great  granite  column,  smothered  with  its 
maze  of  hieroglyphics,  as  it  slowly  ascends  from  the 
horizontal  to  the  perpendicular,  like  a  giant  waking 
and  standing  erect  after  his  long,  long  sleep.  All 
the  way  up  in  the  train  we  had  been  talking  about 
the  wonderful  thing  I  was  so  soon  to  see.  My 
father  had  told  me  that  it  once  stood  in  front  of 
the  great  temple  at  Heliopolis;  that  the  Pharaohs 
drove  past  it  repeatedly  on  their  way  to  and  from  the 
palace;  and  that,  very  possibly,  Moses,  as  a  boy  of 
my  own  age,  sat  on  the  steps  at  its  base  learning  the 
lessons  that  his  tutor  had  prescribed.  It  seemed  to 
bring  Moses  and  me  very  near  together.  To  think 
that  he,  too,  had  stood  beside  this  self-same  obelisk 
and  had  puzzled  over  the  weird  inscriptions  that 
looked  so  bewildering  to  me !    And  now  Heliopohs, 

250 


Everybody's  Text  251 

the  City  of  the  Sun,  has  vanished !  A  single  column 
tells  the  traveler  where  it  stood!  London  is  the 
world's  metropolis  to-day.  And  the  monument,  that 
stood  among  the  splendors  of  the  old  world,  is  being 
re-erected  amidst  the  glories  of  the  new! 

Will  a  time  ever  come,  I  wondered,  when  London 
will  be  as  Heliopolis  is?  Will  the  Needle,  in  some 
future  age,  be  erected  in  some  new  capital — in  the 
metropolis  of  To-morrow?  Had  you  stood,  three 
thousand  years  ago,  where  St.  Paul's  now  stands, 
the  only  sound  that  you  would  have  heard  coming 
up  from  the  forests  around  would  have  been  the 
baying  of  the  wolves.  Wild  swine  ranged  undis- 
turbed along  the  site  of  the  Strand.  But  Egypt  was 
in  her  glory,  and  the  Needle  stood  in  front  of  the 
temple!  Where,  I  wonder,  will  it  stand  in  three 
thousand  years*  time?  Some  such  thought  must 
have  occurred  to  the  authorities  who  are  presiding 
over  its  erection.  For  see,  in  the  base  of  the  obelisk 
a  huge  cavity  yawns !  What  is  to  be  placed  within 
it  ?  What  greeting  shall  we  send  from  the  Civiliza- 
tion-that-is  to  the  Civilization-that-is-to-hef  It  is 
a  strange  list  upon  which  the  officials  have  decided. 
It  includes  a  set  of  coins,  some  specimens  of  weights 
and  measures,  some  children's  toys,  a  London  direc- 
tory, a  bundle  of  newspapers,  the  photographs  of  the 
twelve  most  beautiful  women  of  the  period,  a  box  of 
hairpins  and  other  articles  of  feminine  adornment,  a 
razor,  a  parchment  containing  a  translation  of  the 
hieroglyphics  on  the  obelisk  itself — the  hieroglyph- 


252  A  Handful  of  Stars 

ics  that  so  puzzled  Moses  and  me — and  last,  but 
not  least,  a  text!  Yes,  a  text;  and  a  text,  not  in  one 
language,  but  in  every  language  known!  The  men 
who  tear  down  the  obelisk  from  among  the  crum- 
bling ruins  of  London  may  not  be  able  to  decipher 
this  language,  or  that,  or  the  other.  But  surely  one 
of  these  ten  score  of  tongues  will  have  a  meaning 
for  them !  And  so,  in  the  speech  of  these  two  hun- 
dred and  fifteen  peoples,  these  words  are  written 
out :  For  God  so  Loved  the  World  that  He  Gave 
His  Only  Begotten  Son  that  Whosoever  Be- 
LiEVETH  IN  Him  should  not  Perish  but  have 
Everlasting  Life.  That  is  the  greeting  which  the 
Twentieth  Century  sends  to  the  Fiftieth !  I  do  not 
know  what  those  men — the  men  who  rummage 
among  the  ruins  of  London — will  make  of  the  news- 
papers, the  parchments,  the  photographs  and  the 
hairpins.  I  suspect  that  the  children's  toys  will  seem 
strangely  familiar  to  them :  a  little  girl's  dojl  was 
found  by  the  archaeologists  among  the  ruins  of 
Babylon :  childhood  keeps  pretty  much  the  same  all 
through  the  ages.  But  the  text !  The  text  will  seem 
to  those  far-off  people  as  fresh  as  the  latest  fiftieth- 
century  sensation.  Those  stately  cadences  belong  to 
no  particular  time  and  to  no  particular  clime.  Ages 
may  come  and  go ;  empires  may  rise  and  fall ;  they 
will  still  speak  with  fadeless  charm  to  the  hungry 
hearts  of  men.  They  are  for  the  Nations-that-were, 
for  the  Nations-that-are,  and  for  the  Nations-yet-to- 
be.    That  Text  is  EVERYBODY'S  TEXT. 


Everybody's  Text  253 

II 

Few  things  are  more  arresting  than  the  way  in 
which  these  tremendous  words  have  won  the  hearts 
of  all  kinds  and  conditions  of  men.  I  have  been 
reading  lately  the  lives  of  some  of  our  most  eminent 
evangelists  and  missionaries;  and  nothing  has  im- 
pressed me  more  than  the  conspicuous  part  that  this 
text  has  played  in  their  personal  lives  and  public 
ministries.  Let  me  reach  down  a  few  of  these 
volumes. 

Here  is  the  Life  of  Richard  Weaver.  In  the  days 
immediately  preceding  his  conversion,  Richard  was 
a  drunken  and  dissolute  coal  miner.  It  is  a  rough, 
almost  repulsive,  story.  He  tells  us  how,  after  his 
revels  and  fights,  he  would  go  home  to  his  mother 
with  bruised  and  bleeding  face.  She  always  received 
him  tenderly ;  bathed  his  wounds ;  helped  him  to  bed ; 
and  then  murmured  in  his  ear  the  words  that  at  last 
seemed  inseparable  from  the  sound  of  her  voice : 
God  so  loved  the  world  that  He  gave  His  only  begot- 
ten Son  that  whosoever  believeth  in  Him  should  not 
perish  but  have  everlasting  life.  The  words  came 
back  to  him  in  the  hour  of  his  greatest  need.  His 
soul  was  passing  through  deep  waters.  Filled  with 
misery  and  shame,  and  terrified  lest  he  should  have 
sinned  beyond  the  possibility  of  salvation,  he  crept 
into  a  disused  sand-pit.  He  was  engaged  to  fight 
another  man  that  day,  but  he  was  in  death-grips 
with  a  more  terrible  adversary.  'In  that  old  sand- 
pit,' he  says,  T  had  a  battle  with  the  devil;  and  I 


254  A  Handful  of  Stars 

came  off  more  than  conqueror  through  Him  that 
loved  me.'  And  it  was  the  text  that  did  it.  As  he 
agonized  there  in  the  sand-pit,  tormented  by  a  thou- 
sand doubts,  his  mother's  text  all  at  once  spoke  out 
bravely.  It  left  no  room,  for  uncertainty.  God  so 
loved  the  world  that  He  gave  His  only  begotten 
Son  that  whosoever  helieveth  in  Him  should  not 
perish,  hut  have  everlasting  life.'  '1  thought,' 
Richard  tells  us,  'that  whosoever  meant  me.  What 
faith  was,  I  could  not  tell;  but  I  had  heard  that  it 
was  taking  God  at  His  word ;  and  so  I  took  God  at 
His  word  and  trusted  in  the  finished  work  of  my 
Saviour.  The  happiness  I  then  enjoyed  I  cannot 
describe ;  my  peace  flowed  as  a  river.' 

Duncan  Matheson  and  Richard  Weaver  were  con- 
temporaries. They  were  born  at  about  the  same 
time;  and,  at  about  the  same  time  they  were  con- 
verted. Matheson  was  Scottish;  Weaver  was  En- 
glish. Matheson  was  a  stonemason ;  Weaver  was  a 
coal-miner;  in  due  course  both  became  evangelists. 
In  some  respects  they  were  as  unlike  each  other  as 
two  men  could  possibly  be:  in  other  respects  their 
lives  are  like  sister  ships;  they  seem  exactly  alike. 
Especially  do  they  resemble  each  other  in  their 
earliest  religious  experiences.  We  have  heard 
Weaver's  story :  let  us  turn  to  Matheson's.  Weaver, 
at  the  time  of  his  conversion,  was  twenty-five: 
Matheson  is  twenty-two.  He  has  been  ill  at  ease 
for  some  time,  and  every  sermon  he  has  heard  has 
only  deepened  his  distress.     On  a  sharp  winter's 


Everybody's  Text  255 

morning,  with  the  frost  sparkHng  on  the  shrubs  and 
plants  around  him,  he  is  standing  in  his  father's  gar- 
den, when,  suddenly,  the  words  of  Richard  Weaver's 
text — Everybody's  Text — take  powerful  hold  upon 
his  mind.  'I  saw,*  he  says,  'that  God  loves  me,  for 
God  loves  all  the  world.  I  saw  the  proof  of  His 
love  in  the  giving  of  His  Son.  I  saw  that  ivhoso- 
ever  meant  me,  even  me.  My  load  was  loosed  from 
off  my  back.  Bunyan  describes  his  pilgrim  as  giving 
three  leaps  for  joy  as  his  burden  rolled  into  the  open 
sepulchre.  I  could  not  contain  myself  for  gladness.' 
The  parallel  is  very  striking. 

'God  loves  me!'  exclaims  Richard  Weaver,  in 
surprise. 

7  saw  that  God  loves  me!'  says  Duncan  Matheson. 

7  thought  that  "whosoever"  meant  "me,"  '  says 
Weaver. 

'I  sazv  that  "whosoever"  meant  "me," '  says 
Matheson. 

'The  happiness  I  then  enjoyed  I  cannot  describe,' 
says  our  English  coal-miner. 

7  could  not  contain  myself  for  gladness,'  says  our 
Scottish  stonemason. 

We  may  dismiss  the  evangelists  with  that,  and 
turn  to  the  missionaries. 

HI 

Like  Richard  Weaver  and  Duncan  Matheson, 
Frederick  Arnot  and  Egerton  R.  Young  were  con- 
temporaries.    I  heard  them  both — Fred  Arnot  in 


256  A  Handful  of  Stars 

Exeter  Hall  and  Egerton  Young  in  New  Zealand. 
They  lived  and  labored  on  opposite  sides  of  the 
Atlantic.  Fred  Arnot  gave  himself  to  the  fierce 
Barotses  of  Central  Africa;  Egerton  Young  set  him- 
self to  win  the  Red  Men  of  the  North  American 
woods  and  prairies. 

Arnot's  life  is  one  of  the  most  pathetic  romances 
that  even  Africa  has  given  to  the  world.  He  made 
the  wildest  men  love  him.  Sir  Francis  de  Winton 
declares  that  Arnot  made  the  name  of  Englishman 
fragrant  amidst  the  vilest  habitations  of  cruelty. 
'He  lived  a  life  of  great  hardship,'  says  Sir  Ralph 
Williams;  *I  have  seen  many  missionaries  under 
varied  circumstances,  but  such  an  absolutely  forlorn 
man,  existing  on  from  day  to  day,  almost  homeless, 
without  any  of  the  appliances  that  make  life  bear- 
able, I  have  never  seen.'  And  the  secret  of  this  great 
unselfish  life?  The  secret  was  the  text.  He  was 
only  six  when  he  heard  Livingstone.  He  at  once 
vowed  that  he,  too,  would  go  to  Africa.  When  his 
friends  asked  how  he  would  get  there,  he  replied 
that,  if  that  were  all,  he  would  swim.  But  nobody 
knew  better  than  he  did  that  the  real  obstacles  that 
stood  between  himself  and  a  life  like  Livingstone's 
were  not  physical  but  spiritual.  He  could  not  lead 
Africa  into  the  kingdom  of  Christ  unless  he  had  first 
entered  that  kingdom  himself.  As  a  boy  of  ten,  he 
found  himself  lying  awake  at  two  o'clock  one  morn- 
ing, repeating  a  text.  He  went  over  it  again  and 
again  and  again,     God  so  loved  the  world  that  He 


Everybody's  Text  257 

gave  His  only  begotten  Son  that  whosoever  believeth 
in  Him  should  not  perish  but  have  everlasting  life. 
'This/  says  Sir  William  Robertson  Nicoll,  *was 
Arnot's  lifelong  creed,  and  he  worked  in  its  spirit.' 
This,'  he  says  himself,  'was  my  first  and  chief 
message.'    He  could  imagine  none  greater. 

Exactly  so  was  it  with  Egerton  Young.  He  tells 
us,  for  example,  of  the  way  in  v/hich  he  invaded  the 
Nelson  River  district  and  opened  work  among  people 
who  had  never  before  heard  the  gospel.  He  is  sur- 
rounded by  two  hundred  and  fifty  or  three  hundred 
wild  Indians.  *I  read  aloud,'  he  says,  'those  sub- 
lime words :  For  God  so  loved  the  world  that  He 
gave  His  only  begotten  Son  that  whosoever  believeth 
in  Him  should  not  perish  but  have  everlasting  life. 
They  listened  with  the  most  rapt  attention  whilst 
for  four.hours  I  talked  to  them  of  the  truths  of  this 
glorious  verse.  When  I  had  finished,  every  eye 
turned  towards  the  principal  chief.  He  rose,  and, 
coming  near  me,  delivered  one  of  the  most  thrilling 
addresses  I  have  ever  heard.  Years  have  passed 
away  since  that  hour,  and  yet  the  memory  of  that 
tall,  straight,  impassioned  Indian  is  as  vivid  as  ever. 
His  actions  were  many,  but  all  were  graceful.  His 
voice  was  particularly  fine  and  full  of  pathos,  for  he 
spoke  from  the  heart.' 

'  "Missionary,"  exclaimed  the  stately  old  chief, 
"I  have  not,  for  a  long  time,  believed  in  our  religion. 
I  hear  God  in  the  thunder,  in  the  tempest  and  in 
the  storm :  I  see  His  power  in  the  lightning  that 


2  58  A  Handful  of  Stars 

shivers  the  tree :  I  see  His  goodness  in  giving  us  the 
moose,  the  reindeer,  the  beaver,  and  the  bear.  I  see 
His  loving-kindness  in  sending  us,  when  the  south 
winds  blow,  the  ducks  and  geese;  and  when  the  snow 
and  ice  melt  away,  and  our  lakes  and  rivers  are  open 
again,  I  see  how  He  fills  them  with  fish.  I  have 
watched  all  this  for  years,  and  I  have  felt  that  the 
Great  Spirit,  so  kind  and  watchful  and  loving,  could 
not  be  pleased  by  the  beating  of  the  conjurer's  drum 
or  the  shaking  of  the  rattle  of  the  medicine  man. 
And  so  I  have  had  no  religion.  But  what  you  have 
just  said  fills  my  heart  and  satisfies  its  longings.  I 
am  so  glad  you  have  come  with  this  wonderful  story. 
Stay  as  long  as  you  can !"  ' 

Other  chiefs  followed  in  similar  strains;  and  each 
such  statement  was  welcomed  by  the  assembled 
Indians  with  vigorous  applause.  The  message  of 
the  text  was  the  very  word  that  they  had  all  been 
waiting  for, 

Fred  Arnot  found  that  it  was  what  Africa  was 
waiting  for! 

Egerton  Young  found  that  it  was  what  America 
was  waiting  for! 

It  is  the  word  that  all  the  world  is  waiting  for ! 

For  that  text  is  Everybody's  Text! 

IV 

A  pair  of  evangelists — Weaver  and  Matheson ! 

A  pair  of  missionaries — Arnot  and  Young! 

I  have  one  other  pair  of  witnesses  waiting  to  tes- 


Everybody's  Text  259 

tify  that  this  text  is  Everybody's  Text.  Martin 
Luther  and  Lord  Cairns  have  very  Httle  in  common. 
One  was  German ;  the  other  was  EngHsh.  One  was 
born  in  the  fifteenth  century;  the  other  in  the  nine- 
teenth. One  was  a  monk;  the  other  was  Lord 
Chancellor.  But  they  had  this  in  common,  that  they 
had  to  die.  And  when  they  came  to  die,  they  turned 
their  faces  in  the  same  direction.  Lord  Cairns,  with 
his  parting  breath,  quietly  but  clearly  repeated  the 
words  of  Everybody' s  Text.  God  so  loved  the  world 
that  He  gave  His  only  begotten  Son  that  whosoever 
believeth  in  Him  should  not  perish  but  have  everlast- 
ing life. 

During  his  last  illness,  Luther  was  troubled  with 
severe  headaches.  Someone  recommended  to  him 
an  expensive  medicine.     Luther  smiled. 

*No,'  he  said,  'my  best  prescription  for  head  and 
heart  is  that  God  so  loved  the  world  that  He  gave 
His  only  begotten  Son  that  whosoever  believeth 
in  Him  should  not  perish  but  have  everlasting 
life.' 

A  fortnight  before  he  passed  away,  he  repeated 
the  text  with  evident  ecstasy,  and  added,  'What 
Spartan  saying  can  be  compared  with  this  wonderful 
brevity?  It  is  a  Bible  in  itself !'  And  in  his  dying 
moments  he  again  repeated  the  words,  thrice  over,  in 
Latin. 

'They  are  the  best  prescription  for  headache  and 
heartache  1'  said  Luther. 

There  were  headaches  and  heartaches  in  the  world 


26o  A  Handful  of  Stars 

three  thousand  years  ago,  when  Cleopatra's  Needle 
stood  beside  the  Temple  at  Heliopolis ! 

There  will  be  headaches  and  heartaches  in  the 
world  centuries  hence,  when  the  obelisk  is  rescued 
from  among  the  ruins  of  London ! 

There  were  headaches  and  heartaches  among 
those  Barotse  tribes  to  whom  Fred  Arnot  went ! 

There  were  headaches  and  heartaches  among 
those  tattooed  braves  to  whom  Egerton  Young  car- 
ried the  message ! 

There  are  headaches  and  heartaches  in  England, 
as  the  Lord  Chancellor  knew! 

There  are  headaches  and  heartaches  in  Germany, 
as  Luther  found! 

And,  because  there  are  headaches  and  heartaches 
for  everybody,  this  is  Everybody's  Text.  There  is, 
as  Luther  said,  nothing  like  it. 

V 

When  Sir  Harry  Lauder  was  here  in  Melbourne, 
he  had  just  sustained  the  loss  of  his  only  son.  His 
boy  had  fallen  at  the  front.  And,  with  this  in  mind. 
Sir  Harry  told  a  beautiful  and  touching  story.  *A 
man  came  to  my  dressing-room  in  a  New  York 
theater/  he  said,  'and  told  of  an  experience  that  had 
recently  befallen  him.  In  American  towns,  any 
household  that  had  given  a  son  to  the  war  was  en- 
titled to  place  a  star  on  the  window-pane.  Well,  a 
few  nights  before  he  came  to  see  me,  this  man  was 
walking  down  a  certain  avenue  in  New  York  accom- 


Everybody's  Text  261 

panied  by  his  wee  boy.  The  lad  became  very  inter- 
ested in  the  lighted  windows  of  the  houses,  and 
clapped  his  hands  when  he  saw  the  star.  As  they 
passed  house  after  house,  he  would  say,  "Oh,  look, 
Daddy,  there's  another  house  that  has  given  a  son 
to  the  war !  And  there's  another !  There's  one  with 
two  stars!  And  look!  there's  a  house  with  no  star 
at  all !"  At  last  they  came  to  a  break  in  the  houses. 
Through  the  gap  could  be  seen  the  evening  star  shin- 
ing brightly  in  the  sky.  The  little  fellow  caught  his 
breath.  "Oh,  look,  Daddy,"  he  cried,  "God  must 
have  given  His  Son,  for  He  has  got  a  star  in  His 
window."  ' 

*He  has,  indeed!'  said  Sir  Harry  Lauder,  in  re- 
peating the  story. 

But  it  took  the  clear  eyes  of  a  little  child  to  dis- 
cover that  the  very  stars  are  repeating  Everybody's 
Text.  The  heavens  themselves  are  telling  of  the 
love  that  gave  a  Saviour  to  die  for  the  sins  of  the 
world. 


,"J|''»"I  Sem,„,r,-Speer  L,5,,,r, 


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